Aquantia 4/5/8 port 10Gb switch, when?

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diskdiddler

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Mar 3, 2017
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Several articles on the web in the past 24 months discussing upcoming switches based on cheaper 10G 5G and 2.5G all in one chips from this group.


Anandtech article claimed USD 30 per port, trendnet released a switch based on this reference design, 600us for 8 ports (sigh!)


Anyone know where a 5 or 10GBASET switch with 5 ports is, uberu 300US?

Really waiting on this tech for the tighter budget Soho customers.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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Lots of people waiting but not really much in the way of movement from the switch vendors. Netgear have a couple of switches with more than five 2.5/5/10Gbps ports but they're still new and unproven; same deal with the NICs so personally I'm waiting to see what traction is like before I press on.
 

mstone

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Mar 11, 2015
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prices will come down with volume. the first products are always expensive. 1/2.5/5/10 NICs are just starting to trickle into high end consumer motherboards. I suspect the change will come quickly once the manufacturers finish retooling and burning through inventory.
 

diskdiddler

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The Aquantia stuff was supposed to combat this. Their network cards have been discounted and were very, very cheap. If I recall under $70 US for a 2.5/5/10 - maybe even under $60 US.

That is admitedly 2x the price per port of $30 but that's a boxed product. One would suspect a switch using the same tech, could be done at 30 / 40 $ per port. Thus far, no signs.


My Cat6a cables at home await faster speeds.
 

saivert

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Nov 2, 2015
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It is a hard sell. Only really high end motherboards come with it onboard and gamers don't ask for it. Only aspiring content creators that need fast NAS access may need it and can already do point to point connections "cheap". I'm afraid it is going to be another 5-10 years before 10GBASE-T is mainstream just like gigabit is today. We are just now seeing the beginnings of it.
I have tried playing games from my NAS instead of storing all Steam games locally but you still need SSDs on the server and not all games run fine over a network connection no matter how fast it is.

There is another thread here now for some interesting new switches from QNAP but they are not targeting the home consumer which is reflected in the price and the form factor. I already went with fiber 2 years ago so I would like a combination switch and not go all in on 10GBASE-T.
 

diskdiddler

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Mar 3, 2017
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That's the point of the thread though, Aquantia came out with some new, low cost chips. 2 in fact, 107 and 108 series, one is 10/5/2.5 and the other is 5/2.5

If they could even get within 50% of the price they initially targetted ($45 a port) you may see bigger adoption of 10Gb.
Gaming enthusiast boards, workstation boards. Heck, I don't mind if I'm not mainstream, I'm a tech nerd, so I can pay the niche, enthusiast price. I just don't want to pay the "business" prices we currently have.

Fingers crossed, I suspect in the coming year, eventually my wishes will be fulfilled.
 

capn_pineapple

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Aug 28, 2013
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I just say that they've released the 107 on Amazon though hilariously the "gaming edition" has a darker PCB and $10 premium for... well I can't see any difference actually. Though it's still sitting at $80 per port, it really needs to come down and have switches to come out!
 

diskdiddler

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I think for a dedicated card, that's fine, it's no longer just a port, it's a card, box, packaging, drivers etc. I know for a fact, on discount, I found their 107 and 108 series non gamer cards at under $60 US. I also think they sell the chips to Asus who make a fairly cheap card.

It's just that 4/5 port switch we need so badly.
 

EngChiSTH

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Jun 27, 2018
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The bigger problem is that right now I do not see any killer app for mass adoption of 10G tech at consumer level - what would it be?
1. Existing speed at home is more than plenty for any streaming service currently available (may be more of real cloud gaming in the future but access speeds and quality have to catch up first)
2. Regarding people who want speed at home for things like home lab, they have so many other options - if you want it very cheap get a $100 Brocade with 4 SFP+ and $30 network card , if you want a little faster - get $300 Brocade with 40Gb capacity and $100-150 network card.

What reason would manufacturers have to move forward? where is the market? first category would not buy until it is dirt cheap, second category is already set. thus slooow progress..

On my end I am curious of the new devices Mikrotik is announcing to see how those would be priced..
 

mstone

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Mar 11, 2015
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The bigger problem is that right now I do not see any killer app for mass adoption of 10G tech at consumer level - what would it be?
Backups, NAS. Disk speed has gotten way ahead of LAN speed. People bought 1Gbps long before they needed more than 100Mbps to support their internet speeds...
 

EngChiSTH

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Jun 27, 2018
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Backups, NAS. Disk speed has gotten way ahead of LAN speed. People bought 1Gbps long before they needed more than 100Mbps to support their internet speeds...

same challenge - vast majority of the people would buy two bay NAS from Synology or QNAP, install the 'magic RAID' which would make their data invulnerable, set up Plex on it, and call it a day. Only now and only few of the systems start to come with 10G ports , at multiples of pricing of the low cost 2 bay systems. How much does Synology want for their 10G add on cards again?

for the very small (enthusiast) minority , they are either already set up or jumping in to it when technology cost lowers below their pain point. as one of the newbies joining the club now, the cost between SFP+ and alternatives was interesting - as much as I wanted to go Cat6, the cheap second hand enterprise switches (Brocade), cheap ConnectX-3 cards, and easily available QNAP NAS with built in SFP+ made alternatives look worse. . a switch + 2 10G cards + cables is less than $200 - how can manufacturer win me over when two cards alone would cost that much and I still have to buy a switch ?
 

mstone

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same challenge - vast majority of the people would buy two bay NAS from Synology or QNAP, install the 'magic RAID' which would make their data invulnerable, set up Plex on it, and call it a day. Only now and only few of the systems start to come with 10G ports , at multiples of pricing of the low cost 2 bay systems. How much does Synology want for their 10G add on cards again?
No, it's not the same challenge. First you argued that there wasn't an application, now you're arguing that it's too expensive. Do you remember how much 1 gigabit ports cost when they were new? (A heck of a lot more than 2.5/5 ports cost now.) The only thing keeping prices high now is lack of volume. I would expect that prices will come down really fast once production lines get retooled and existing inventory is sold off. E.g., netgear is offering discounts on its existing lower-end 2.5/5 gear, which they tend to do before introducing something new so they're not stuck with a bunch of obsolete product.
 

EngChiSTH

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Jun 27, 2018
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No, it's not the same challenge. First you argued that there wasn't an application, now you're arguing that it's too expensive. Do you remember how much 1 gigabit ports cost when they were new? (A heck of a lot more than 2.5/5 ports cost now.) The only thing keeping prices high now is lack of volume. I would expect that prices will come down really fast once production lines get retooled and existing inventory is sold off. E.g., netgear is offering discounts on its existing lower-end 2.5/5 gear, which they tend to do before introducing something new so they're not stuck with a bunch of obsolete product.
Remember, we are trying to find that 'killer app' to drive mass demand and therefore market pressure to create supply. Backup/NAS isn't that for mass market- not 'sexy' and Plex NAS thing works just fine on 1 gigabit. any other thoughts? people who know what NAS is are in very small minority, even smaller subset of them actually owns NAS, and miniscule amount of people do something other than off the shelf 2-4 bay items. people who run their own ESXI clusters are even smaller minority and they already have their set ups and are now more interested in 100G and 40G vs 2.5/5 gear. Again, with used SFP+ switching and card prices where they are, what is the point of something more expensive and much slower for home user (in corporate, all of that cat5e/cat6 that is already deployed is a different item)..

or making it a simple question - what exactly would drive mass demand ? what life changing/life enhancing thing could manufacturers 'sell' because it isn't 'backups'. 8k video (and much larger disk sizes)? some virtual reality bandwidth requirements?
 

mstone

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or making it a simple question - what exactly would drive mass demand ? what life changing/life enhancing thing could manufacturers 'sell' because it isn't 'backups'. 8k video (and much larger disk sizes)? some virtual reality bandwidth requirements?
You're stuck in the mindset that there will be a huge price premium, but I think it's going to be more on the order of a couple of bucks--way more than people already spend to get "high end" gear with a bunch of functionality that they don't need. All it needs to "sell" is to say "X times faster" on the spec sheet. The manufacturers will fall all over themselves to have something to differentiate product lines now that 100Mbps is gone and everything from the cheapest to the most expensive gear has functionally identical 1Gbps copper ports.

Bottom line: there exist people who need more than gigabit. In the process of selling stuff to them, there will be enormous opportunities to up-sell to others who don't need it. In the end, the stuff becomes cheaper for everyone. I'd guess that the number of people who need more than 1gbps exceeds the number of people who need more than 4 cores, but intel & amd have done a fine job of selling 6 & 8 core consumer CPUs to people who don't really need them on the basis of "it's just a little bit more money".
 

Rand__

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Mar 6, 2014
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I think the catch22 situation will be broken whenever Intel puts 10G into consumer chipsets.
 

brentsg

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Aug 22, 2017
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OP, just wanted to make sure the Netgear XS505M and XS508M were on your radar.

They are unmanaged, but they will achieve what you're after. I know they don't quite hit the mark but maybe you can grab one discounted, or tweak your use case to fit the smaller one.

I actually just grabbed the 8 port Buffalo unit from Amazon Warehouse for $385 so will be testing that out.
 
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