$99 10Gb NIC from Asus
- Thread starter McKajVah
- Start date
Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.
I never understood why the chipset for e5 v3/v4 didn't end up with some form of native 10G.
In any case who actually deploys a server without at least 10G ?? (If for no other reason than it's cheap and almost standard and you can all ways use some bandwidth for backup tasks)
At present the industry is transitioning to a more integrated 25/50/100 approach. It makes some sense that there is limited integration in the current chip generation (outside of SoC's intended mostly for appliances and embedded like Xeon-D) - but I expect that to change in the next cycle.
You have a point, once 10G is integrated then Intel will loose a lot of network sales, not that a lot of the adapter we buy are Intel but I am sure a lot of companies do prefer Intel of say qlogic or Broadcom.
Sitting just outside the 50 that @StevenDTX does I would say we are 50-60% 10g or better, even today though we dp order some servers without 10g like domain Controllers as it's just not needed but all racks have 10g base-t top of rack so it was zero $ it would be used. For any blade server etc using 10/25 SFP+
Sitting just outside the 50 that @StevenDTX does I would say we are 50-60% 10g or better, even today though we dp order some servers without 10g like domain Controllers as it's just not needed but all racks have 10g base-t top of rack so it was zero $ it would be used. For any blade server etc using 10/25 SFP+
Aside from storage servers and backup servers and a few special roles, maybe huge virtulised servers what though need more than 10g now or even in the next few years. 1G to 10G is a huge leap and that's likely what most server will need, sure 40/100g on the network side i a sure, just less so on the server at least for now. NVMe over the higher bandwidth connections will be somewhat interested but also limited I guess.
I don't want to wait until 10GbE switches come down in price. Having two servers in my home lab (currently connected with Mellanox ConnectX-3 directly) will definitely try these switch-less. No RDMA probably, but still 
10 GbE over Cat6 sounds like sci-fi
10 GbE over Cat6 sounds like sci-fi I purchased 2x each
The AQC-107 are the Asus cards in this thread.
Over Cat-5e in home using iPerf3.
For the 10G cards speed was measured connected through 2 10G switches.
The switches are connected to each other in the home via Cat-5e
Card #1 (Bedroom) is connected to the Asus switch over Cat-5e.
Card #2 (Garage) is connected to the Netgear switch over 5' Cat-6
I ended up purchasing 2 switches to connect these cards.
However, direct connection was across 2 longer Cat-5e runs.
I could not get the AQC-108 5G cards to connect at 5G to the 10G switches.
The 10G switches consider these cards to be 1G and speed is limited to 1G (949 Mbps)
I may be able to return the AQS-108 cards. I can't see much use for them now.
Aquantia AQC-108 5G cards
Aquantia AQC-107 10G cards - Asus XG-C100C
Aquantia AQC-107 10G cards - Asus XG-C100C
The AQC-107 are the Asus cards in this thread.
Over Cat-5e in home using iPerf3.
AQC-108 5G: 4.30 Gbps
AQC-107 10G: 6.39 Gbps
AQC-107 10G: 6.39 Gbps
For the 10G cards speed was measured connected through 2 10G switches.
The switches are connected to each other in the home via Cat-5e
Card #1 (Bedroom) is connected to the Asus switch over Cat-5e.
Card #2 (Garage) is connected to the Netgear switch over 5' Cat-6
I ended up purchasing 2 switches to connect these cards.
- Netgear XS708v2
placed in Garage with Home Lab - Asus XG-U2008
placed in Bedroom walk-in closet
all home wiring runs into master bedroom closet
However, direct connection was across 2 longer Cat-5e runs.
I could not get the AQC-108 5G cards to connect at 5G to the 10G switches.
The 10G switches consider these cards to be 1G and speed is limited to 1G (949 Mbps)
I may be able to return the AQS-108 cards. I can't see much use for them now.
Here are a few more setup details.
Test was run between:
A direct connection between the 2 cards was only 5.3 Gbps.
This would be due to signal loss over a substantially longer Cat-5e run.
Samsung 960 M.2 (x4) file transfer to the Server was ~730 MB/s
Disk on server was likely 2 SSD in RAID 0 striped.
Most of my higher performance disk arrays run between 500-800 MB/s
This makes larger file transfer to/from workstation much more palatable
Test was run between:
- Workstation in Bedroom
Windows 10 (1703) x64
Aquantia Drivers 1.40.42 - Server in Garage
Windows 2016
Aquantia Drivers 1.40.42 (same drivers)
A direct connection between the 2 cards was only 5.3 Gbps.
This would be due to signal loss over a substantially longer Cat-5e run.
Samsung 960 M.2 (x4) file transfer to the Server was ~730 MB/s
Disk on server was likely 2 SSD in RAID 0 striped.
Most of my higher performance disk arrays run between 500-800 MB/s
This makes larger file transfer to/from workstation much more palatable
Yup, 1 or 10.
Some press reports indicate that Aquantia is working with partners to release lower cost switches.
I expect these would support 2.5G & 5G speeds.
Over Cat-5e on 2 legs of trip
One of the 2 Asus cards died and I had to RMA back to Newegg.
This test is from Asus 10G in bedroom to MNPA19-XTR through 2 switches.
I retested the link using iperf3 and ntttcp.
I am guessing that iperf3 on windows is not the best test.
Based on some other posts I tweaked up the send/receive buffers and turned on Jumbo frames.
iperf3 AQC-107 10G: 7.89 Gbps
ntttcp AQC-107 10G: 9.35 Gbps
ntttcp AQC-107 10G: 9.35 Gbps
One of the 2 Asus cards died and I had to RMA back to Newegg.
This test is from Asus 10G in bedroom to MNPA19-XTR through 2 switches.
I retested the link using iperf3 and ntttcp.
I am guessing that iperf3 on windows is not the best test.
Based on some other posts I tweaked up the send/receive buffers and turned on Jumbo frames.