Gigabit + 10Gb Switches under $550

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Thomas H

Member
Dec 2, 2017
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realized I never posted this here

brocade ICX6450 - $100 on ebay
  • 24/48 1gbE copper (PoE available)
  • 4x 10gbE SFP+ (also work great with $50 Mikrotik S+RJ10 SFP+ modules for 10gbE over copper as well)
  • full layer 3, IPV4 + IPV6 routing, VRRP, OSPF, everything you'd expect on an enterprise switch
  • 22w power draw with a couple ports active
  • 1 small fan, nearly silent
brocade ICX6610 ~$250 on ebay (sometimes much less with the best offer feature)
  • 24/48 1gbE copper (PoE available)
  • 16x 10gbE SFP+ (also work great with $50 Mikrotik S+RJ10 SFP+ modules for 10gbE over copper as well)
  • 2x 40gbE
  • full layer 3, IPV4 + IPV6 routing, VRRP, OSPF, BGP, VRFs, tunnels, everything
  • 100w power draw with a couple ports active
  • audible - about the same as an R710, little quieter than LB6M
The 10gbE ports require a license to unlock, but licenses are free for *existing* STH members (have some left over from work)
I have been eyeing for a 10GbE (and possibly 40GbE) setup for awhile. This will be for a homelab running Proxmox, pfSense, ZFS NAS, etc. and PoE ports for IP cameras and WAP. Read through most of this thread and followed your thread on Brocade ICX 6450/6610.

How would you compare used enterprise grade Brocades versus budget TP-Link T1700G-28TQ, Netgear GC728X, CRS-328-24P-4S+RM?
 
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fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
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How would you compare used enterprise grade Brocades versus budget TP-Link T1700G-28TQ, Netgear GC728X, CRS-328-24P-4S+RM?
See my post here for my general take - https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...icx6450-icx6610-etc.21107/page-15#post-198783

tldr - it's easy to forget because of how cheap they've gotten on ebay, but it's an entirely different league of product. It's kind like comparing a ferrari with a couple hundred miles on it to a new prius. If you HAVE to buy new for corporate/purchase order/etc reasons then go with the prius, but otherwise you can get something with an order of magnitude more engineering & design put into it, remember that those ICX switches were $3000 and $5000 new just a couple years ago, there's not really a comparison to be made to a little tp-link or netgear
 

Stereodude

Active Member
Feb 21, 2016
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I'm looking forward to the forthcoming Mikrotik CRS309-1G-8S+PC (8x SFP+ / 1x Gigabit Ethernet) and the CRS312-4C+8XG (8x 10G/5G/2.5G/1G Ethernet ports / 4x 10G Ethernet / 10G SFP+ combo ports).
 

thedotlair

New Member
Jul 3, 2011
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Does anybody know of any "el-cheapo" SPF+ to RJ45 10gb GBICs? Been looking around to connect a 10gb RJ45 device to a Dell PowerConnect 7024P with the 10gb module in but everywhere I look I can't get a definitive answer if they'll work.

Edit:
Closest I've found:
Dell compatible -- SFP+ Copper SFP-10G-T 10G Base-T RJ45 | eBay
10G-T Copper SFP-10G-T 10G Base-T RJ45 ( Intel, Cisco, Dell, Fortinet undsw) | eBay
GP-10GSFP-T DELL Compatible 10GBASE-T SFP+ Copper RJ-45 30m Transceiver | eBay
Dell PGYJT SFP-10G-T 10G Copper SFP+ Base-T RJ45 Transceiver Module PGYJT 617949906715 | eBay

Not sure if Dell vendor lock their GBICs etc.
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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About 500 posts later and rather an amount of time it’s still surprising there is still not any good fanless L3 switches with more than a couple of 10G ports.
I guess the power consumption for 10G really isn’t coming down, nobody is using the newer fan processes either as they are constrained for capacity... one day we can hope.
 

Craash

Active Member
Apr 7, 2017
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Thanks to this thread and @BLinux , I've had my pair of T1700G-28TQ's since May 1 of 2017 (got in just under $300). I have all eight SFP+ in use (one each switch to bridge, so 6 clients). I know some have had issues with memory load, but I've been most happy with mine. Performance is rock solid and no noise at all.

Actually, made me curious so I had to go check out the uptime. 126 day - 21 hour - 42 min - 19 sec. (firmware 2.0.1 Build 20171218 Rel.64382(Beta)) I know the last power off time was a several hour power loss in the neighborhood that outlasted my battery back up.

Do I hope for a better solution down the road? Sure. Would I buy these switches again? In a second.
 
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Takrbark3

New Member
Dec 17, 2017
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Hi!
Code:
-HP 5406zl: (modular, L3+)
-CISCO 4948E-F: (48xgigabit , 4xSFP+, 2xPSU, L3++ )
-CISCO Nexus 3k series
-Alcatel-Lucent 6850: ( 24/48 port gigabit + 2XFP )
-TP-LINK: never again :)
-Mikrotik: Not bad, but basic features missing ( Port Security; DHCP Snooping; IP Source Guard)
So I would go some enterprise switches - if you need POE/POE+ power, use POE panel with separate PSU, example:
Code:
 https://www.cyberteam.pl/produkt/3920_adapter-poe-24p-rack-19-gigabit-adag-24p-1u-v2
 

Craash

Active Member
Apr 7, 2017
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And were can we get these for under $550 (other than an outlier here or there)?

Hi!
Code:
-HP 5406zl: (modular, L3+)
-CISCO 4948E-F: (48xgigabit , 4xSFP+, 2xPSU, L3++ )
-CISCO Nexus 3k series
-Alcatel-Lucent 6850: ( 24/48 port gigabit + 2XFP )
-TP-LINK: never again :)
-Mikrotik: Not bad, but basic features missing ( Port Security; DHCP Snooping; IP Source Guard)
So I would go some enterprise switches - if you need POE/POE+ power, use POE panel with separate PSU, example:
Code:
 https://www.cyberteam.pl/produkt/3920_adapter-poe-24p-rack-19-gigabit-adag-24p-1u-v2
 

Dev_Mgr

Active Member
Sep 20, 2014
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Texas
This isn't new as such, but I picked up a Force10 S4810 from Ebay on auction for less than $350 (buy-it-now typically is around US$ 600).

On top of that, I got lucky and it even came with 40 SFP+ transceivers.

It's nowhere near silent, but where I plan to put it, the noise factor doesn't impact me much.
 

koisama

New Member
Oct 22, 2018
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I wonder if there exists another switch like the well known Brocade ICX6610, something with every possible option - 1G copper, 10G SFP+, and 40G QSFP+ in one device, and reasonably priced.

Juniper EX4300 comes close, but it's twice as expensive, has less SFP+ and they require a fairly expensive extension card.