Debating switch purchase (1G with SFP+)

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Mithril

Active Member
Sep 13, 2019
354
106
43
So after a few months of "sh-t, thats the power bill?", plus entering the time of year where even with a 2U rackmount UPS I'm worried about storms and runtime; I'm looking at pairing things down power wise. I've mostly got things re-consolidated for the servers that will run 24/7 but I'm not sure switch wise. I'll be keeping my 6610 but not running it 24/7.

Wishlist: more than 4 ports of SFP+, 12+ 1G copper, 50w or less.

Top 2 contenders ICX6450 and ICX7250. The 6450 24 port only draws 25 watts, and has 4 SFP+ ports. The 7250 is double the power and the SFP+ ports. Both are affordable on e bay. Most of the other options I've seen are either more power hungry for the same number of SFP+ ports, or far more expensive to the point where "just buy another UPS and the rest pays for power bill difference for years" applies.

L3 is *nice*, but not needed in this switch. Managed (web or commandline) is required, for LACP etc.
 
Last edited:

hmw

Active Member
Apr 29, 2019
570
226
43
So after a few months of "sh-t, thats the power bill?", plus entering the time of year where even with a 2U rackmount UPS I'm worried about storms and runtime; I'm looking at pairing things down power wise. I've mostly got things re-consolidated for the servers that will run 24/7 but I'm not sure switch wise. I'll be keeping my 6610 but not running it 24/7.

Wishlist: more than 4 ports of SFP+, 12+ 1G copper, 50w or less.

Top 2 contenders ICX6450 and ICX7250. The 6450 24 port only draws 25 watts, and has 4 SFP+ ports. The 7250 is double the power and the SFP+ ports. Both are affordable on e bay. Most of the other options I've seen are either more power hungry for the same number of SFP+ ports, or far more expensive to the point where "just buy another UPS and the rest pays for power bill difference for years" applies.

L3 is *nice*, but not needed in this switch.
I am in the same boat as you. Thanks to the high rates in Calif., I am thinking of getting rid of my ICX6610 and replacing with something like a Netgear XS724 - it's got 24 multi gig ports. I haven't found any reviews or literature on power consumption but it's definitely a lot less than the Ruckus. I have like 3 PoE powered devices which are better served with a 4 port PoE switch. And yeah - L3 isn't really needed.

Sadly my main server is an EPYC so it's got really high idle power draw, around 100w :(
 

Mithril

Active Member
Sep 13, 2019
354
106
43
I am in the same boat as you. Thanks to the high rates in Calif., I am thinking of getting rid of my ICX6610 and replacing with something like a Netgear XS724 - it's got 24 multi gig ports. I haven't found any reviews or literature on power consumption but it's definitely a lot less than the Ruckus. I have like 3 PoE powered devices which are better served with a 4 port PoE switch. And yeah - L3 isn't really needed.

Sadly my main server is an EPYC so it's got really high idle power draw, around 100w :(

At over a grand, it better run at like 5watts lol. They showing up on the used market? Could be looking at the wrong model too. Oh, is that an unmanaged switch? That would be a no-go for me

Did you mean XS724EM ? That's a 1,800 switch new and only has 2 SFP+ ports. Is multi-gig worth a grand and a half? ;)
 
Last edited:

hmw

Active Member
Apr 29, 2019
570
226
43
At over a grand, it better run at like 5watts lol. They showing up on the used market? Could be looking at the wrong model too. Oh, is that an unmanaged switch? That would be a no-go for me

Did you mean XS724EM ? That's a 1,800 switch new and only has 2 SFP+ ports. Is multi-gig worth a grand and a half? ;)
It's smart managed - i.e. L2 and basic management. Trying to find refurb and used, they used to go for $500-$600 but can't find them anymore. Thanks to the pandemic, there's shortages of everything
 

Mithril

Active Member
Sep 13, 2019
354
106
43
It's smart managed - i.e. L2 and basic management. Trying to find refurb and used, they used to go for $500-$600 but can't find them anymore. Thanks to the pandemic, there's shortages of everything

Hmm, even at 600, only 2 SFP+ would make it non viable for my usecase. Might be good for the office, depending on the noise level, still not sure multi-gig is worth that much, I'd rather toss a PCIe card in and go for full 10G :D
 

hmw

Active Member
Apr 29, 2019
570
226
43
Have tou
Hmm, even at 600, only 2 SFP+ would make it non viable for my usecase. Might be good for the office, depending on the noise level, still not sure multi-gig is worth that much, I'd rather toss a PCIe card in and go for full 10G :D
A lot of access points, NUCs and embedded boards have the Realtek/Intel 2.5GbE ports. The other thing is that with 5G and 2.5G you don't need to upgrade existing wiring (I have Cat5) - and finally, I used SFP to copper transceivers for the ICX6610 but there's heat + they don't seem to play nice with other endpoints. For example my Ruckus AP has a 2.5 GbE port but just plain hates the SFP<->Copper transceiver. And I get horrible performance in one direction using these transceivers.

On the other hand there's new Marvell PHYs - especially after the Aquantia acquisition. And also new switching silicon. Perhaps @Patrick can shed light on whether and when we may possibly see cheaper 10G/Multi-G switches based on new Marvell IP on the market :D
 

Mithril

Active Member
Sep 13, 2019
354
106
43
Have tou


A lot of access points, NUCs and embedded boards have the Realtek/Intel 2.5GbE ports. The other thing is that with 5G and 2.5G you don't need to upgrade existing wiring (I have Cat5) - and finally, I used SFP to copper transceivers for the ICX6610 but there's heat + they don't seem to play nice with other endpoints. For example my Ruckus AP has a 2.5 GbE port but just plain hates the SFP<->Copper transceiver. And I get horrible performance in one direction using these transceivers.

On the other hand there's new Marvell PHYs - especially after the Aquantia acquisition. And also new switching silicon. Perhaps @Patrick can shed light on whether and when we may possibly see cheaper 10G/Multi-G switches based on new Marvell IP on the market :D

Yea, I don't have anything *worth* being multi gig that I wouldn't go straight to 10G. I avoid realtek personally ;). Also, even with a good AP, getting a gig, much less multi gig, of real word traffic is a "if you stand in the exact right spot" sort of thing in this house, anything that *really* needs the speed gets hardwired anyways so it's not something I'm interested in spending money to solve :D Quite frankly the devices the use the wifi most (phones and tablets) are going to be limited by their own internals long before they would hit 1Gbit
 

atomicwrites

New Member
Mar 18, 2021
3
0
1
Have tou


A lot of access points, NUCs and embedded boards have the Realtek/Intel 2.5GbE ports. The other thing is that with 5G and 2.5G you don't need to upgrade existing wiring (I have Cat5) - and finally, I used SFP to copper transceivers for the ICX6610 but there's heat + they don't seem to play nice with other endpoints. For example my Ruckus AP has a 2.5 GbE port but just plain hates the SFP<->Copper transceiver. And I get horrible performance in one direction using these transceivers.

On the other hand there's new Marvell PHYs - especially after the Aquantia acquisition. And also new switching silicon. Perhaps @Patrick can shed light on whether and when we may possibly see cheaper 10G/Multi-G switches based on new Marvell IP on the market :D
No idea if this is still relevant for you, but apparently those 10G SFP+ modules that have undocumented support for 2.5G and 5G don't actually tell the switch when they are running at a lower rate (or it's just not a feature of SFP+, not sure) so the switch tries to cram 10Gbps of traffic down the 2.5G link resulting in dropped packets all over the place and accounting for retransmits it can be worse than plain gig ethernet. If your switch supports rate limiting ports, setting it to a max of like 2.3 Gbps should get fix the problem.