Home friendly sfp28/25GBe switch ?

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Crond

Member
Mar 25, 2019
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Hi All,

Does anyone know of any switches that would satisfy following requirements:
* L3 fully managed (VLAN, static routes, policy based routing).
* Non-blocking / wire speed
* at least 2 sfp28 ports
* at least 16 rj45/1GBe ports (10Gbe/multigig ports prefered)
* quiet (preferably Wisper-quiet) to be able to seat next to it for extended period of time, without any hardware modifications

I can find a lot of switches for datacenter, but nothing for home use.
 
Jul 14, 2017
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I'm dubious as to if you will find anything.

10 gig ethernet is really only hitting the consumer level in any sort of big way in the past year or two.

Anything faster is basically going to be datacenter equipment. Microtek seems to be the most likely to produce something at some point that will fill the bill for you, but AFAIK their only switch wt faster than 10 gig, is not exactly silent.

 

Crond

Member
Mar 25, 2019
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If it would be easy I would not be asking :) I did my research before posting, but maybe somebody is aware of some hidden gem.
 

koifish59

Member
Sep 30, 2020
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I wanted something like this too. I ended up settling for a Brocade ICX 6610 for 40gbe instead. I couldn't find a suitable SFP28 switch.
 

i386

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Mar 18, 2016
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I can find a lot of switches for datacenter, but nothing for home use.
Consumer gear is starting to get 2.5GBE and faster links, topping out on 10GBE over copper cable. (Q)SFP28 is datacenter technology...

I have a few alarms for sfp28 switches on ebay, but this equipment is more expensive than 100GBE stuff...
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Never seen anything remotely close to usable at home, the vast majority of cheaper options are like 32 port 1u devices that use 200+ watts and sound like a jet taking off.
 

Freebsd1976

Active Member
Feb 23, 2018
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maybe mellanox msn2100 could usable at home , if replace or mod fans , 50W or less for idle ,but it expensive
 

RTM

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Jan 26, 2014
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The closest thing I can think of is the Mikrotik CCR2004 (which has 2x SFP28 ports and 12x SFP+ ports), but it is not a switch (it is a router) though and is quite massively oversubscribed in terms of throughput, best case appears to be it doing around 40g when doing bridging.

So perhaps that, with a supplemental switch (such as a CRS326), you might get something somewhat usable, but honestly a standard 10g L3 switch seems like a better choice.
 
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fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
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the closest thing that comes anywhere near matching your list (nothing exists that matches them exactly), is, and I can't believe I'm about to mention them, but mikrotik. they have a unit that's 2x sfp28, and 12x 1/10gbE SFP+. You can get copper out of them with cheap 1gbe copper SFP modules. it idles around 40w. you're not going to find anything lower. no clue if it's wirespeed or mikrotiks crappy CPU bound stuff MikroTik CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS Cloud Core Router (w/ dual redundant power supply)

edit: oops, great minds think alike. @RTM 's reply just popped up
 
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Stephan

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Apr 21, 2017
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The issue with >1G ports is heat. A typical 1G port will guzzle up 500mW worst-case already, so quiet aka passively cooled and more than 16 ports is already a rare thing. SFP+ 10G ports need 6-8 times more per port or 3-4 watts. 10GBase-T ethernet because of complicated modulation is even higher with 4-6 watts per port worst-case. Add some management processor with 1-3 watts to that and you'd get 50 watts that would need to be cooled away with a simple hypothetical 10G 8-port switch. The heatsink alone would be huge and heavy, like 30x30cm, so the switch continues to work even in the tropics. So that ain't happening. At some point there will be an innovation like direct fiber to SoC coupling with much less power, enabling passively cooled 100G also at home. But that is 10-20 years out.

If quietness is paramount, your best bet is a 16/24 port 1G + 2/4 port SFP+ 10G type switch.

The next problem is your full L3 requirement. Usually this requires big chips like HP/Aruba ProVision ASICs. Big chips, big fans, not quiet. There is a Level One switch called GTL-2881/57080903 which can do some "L3 lite" i.e. IPv4 static routes. But I would rather do firewalling/routing on a Linux box and get a fanless Dell EMC N1124T-ON with some SFP+ modules for it.

If fanless is out the window, check out some Arista threads here on STH. Those have 40G (dead end - 25/100 is the path forward), sometimes ebay has a steal. Mellanox ConnectX-3 that support 40G in servers.
 
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Crond

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Mar 25, 2019
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the closest thing that comes anywhere near matching your list (nothing exists that matches them exactly), is, and I can't believe I'm about to mention them, but mikrotik. they have a unit that's 2x sfp28, and 12x 1/10gbE SFP+. You can get copper out of them with cheap 1gbe copper SFP modules. it idles around 40w. you're not going to find anything lower. no clue if it's wirespeed or mikrotiks crappy CPU bound stuff MikroTik CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS Cloud Core Router (w/ dual redundant power supply)

edit: oops, great minds think alike. @RTM 's reply just popped up
Unfortunetly it's a router so it's far from wire speed. Best case scenario (fast-path) it can deliver ~11Mpps anything other than trivial setup will kill fastpath and brings it down to ~1.1Mpps
 
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pyro_

Active Member
Oct 4, 2013
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Ubiquiti has a 28x 10gb sfp+ and 4x 25gb sfp28 L3 switch currently in their beta store which has a max power draw of 100w

 

Mithril

Active Member
Sep 13, 2019
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The issue with >1G ports is heat. A typical 1G port will guzzle up 500mW worst-case already, so quiet aka passively cooled and more than 16 ports is already a rare thing. SFP+ 10G ports need 6-8 times more per port or 3-4 watts. 10GBase-T ethernet because of complicated modulation is even higher with 4-6 watts per port worst-case. Add some management processor with 1-3 watts to that and you'd get 50 watts that would need to be cooled away with a simple hypothetical 10G 8-port switch. The heatsink alone would be huge and heavy, like 30x30cm, so the switch continues to work even in the tropics. So that ain't happening. At some point there will be an innovation like direct fiber to SoC coupling with much less power, enabling passively cooled 100G also at home. But that is 10-20 years out.

If quietness is paramount, your best bet is a 16/24 port 1G + 2/4 port SFP+ 10G type switch.

The next problem is your full L3 requirement. Usually this requires big chips like HP/Aruba ProVision ASICs. Big chips, big fans, not quiet. There is a Level One switch called GTL-2881/57080903 which can do some "L3 lite" i.e. IPv4 static routes. But I would rather do firewalling/routing on a Linux box and get a fanless Dell EMC N1124T-ON with some SFP+ modules for it.

If fanless is out the window, check out some Arista threads here on STH. Those have 40G (dead end - 25/100 is the path forward), sometimes ebay has a steal. Mellanox ConnectX-3 that support 40G in servers.

Not sure where you are getting your power numbers from?

This is what I could find on the spec:

" Power supply voltage defined in the specification is +3.3 V, but there are two maximum power consumption levels: Level-1 (<1 W) and Level-2 (<1.5 W). Level-1 SFP+ does not require a heat sink, and can be built into smaller and higher-density systems. On the other hand, Level-2 SFP+ requires a heat sink. On power-on sequence, Level-2 SFP+ has to be started operating at Level-1 (<1W) and then start at Level-2 after the system recognizes operation at Level-2."

And here is a 8 port SFP+ managed switch at 23W with attachments claimed: MikroTik

Wecan certainly discuss how *well* that companies switches handle traffic, but as far as I am aware their power claims are fairly close. Yes, 10G copper uses way more power, but optical not so much.

Here is a STH review of the bigger 16 port unit, which can run passively sometimes: https://www.servethehome.com/mikrotik-crs317-1g-16s-rm-review/ Max power rated 44W, max observed power was 34W. Again, not something you'd want to use as L3, but as a L2 switch it works basically at line speed.

Edit:
And as for 40GB being "dead". As clearly pointed out by the discussion in this very thread, even 25GB has a LOT of caveats for a home/smaller setup. And any fiber you run for 10/40GB is going to be compatible for 25/100GB that uses MM, even down to OM2 if the distance is short enough. 40GB transceivers are *cheap* at this point, around 10 bucks or less if you don't care about brand. 40GB Cards are cheap too. And if you need to in the future, there are optics which can do 10/25GB or 40/100GB so you could later interconnect 10/40GB equipment to 25/100GB equipment even without native (Q)SFP+ ports.
 
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