How long before we see affordable consumer 25 GbE switches?

[DaveLTX]

Because for the most part fibre and DAC cables are not consumer parts and with no useful standard for 25Gbps over twisted pair it severely limits the likelihood of even SFP28 switches for the SOHO market.

You are not going to see consumer level 25Gbps internet access for consumers for a considerable period of time given the current price point of 25Gbps capable routers. They would need to drop by a factor of around 100 to make it viable.

They are becoming consumer parts, it would help if you expanded your mind a little bit

It's not even about internet access, we have 10G SFP+ ports on consumer routers even before 10G is even half common
So if not many people have 10G FTTH does that mean its not consumer then?

 

[blunden]

holy shit why are you so fixated on RJ45?

When CONSUMER routers even come with SFP+ it is won't be unexpected that eventually fiber or SFP+ will become very common
It's not a matter of counting consumer routers with sfp+ ports on one hand, there's a lot of them and the earliest ones track back a few years ago when wifi 6E was starting to take off

He isn't, but most consumers are.

The consumer routers with SFP+ have them primarily to allow you to skip your ISP's media converter. I haven't seen any with SFP+ LAN ports too. That's a pretty important distinction.

I personally would mind seeing options like that become available in consumer products though.

Because for the most part fibre and DAC cables are not consumer parts and with no useful standard for 25Gbps over twisted pair it severely limits the likelihood of even SFP28 switches for the SOHO market.

You are not going to see consumer level 25Gbps internet access for consumers for a considerable period of time given the current price point of 25Gbps capable routers. They would need to drop by a factor of around 100 to make it viable.

Yes, I imagine that you're right about that.

Well, there are already a few consumer level ISPs offering 25 Gbps internet connections. They generally leave it to the customer to find a suitable router though, but might give some suggestions.

 

[DaveLTX]

He isn't, but most consumers are.

The consumer routers with SFP+ have them primarily to allow you to skip your ISP's media converter. I haven't seen any with SFP+ LAN ports too. That's a pretty important distinction.

I personally would mind seeing options like that become available in consumer products though.

Yes, I imagine that you're right about that.

Well, there are already a few consumer level ISPs offering 25 Gbps internet connections. They generally leave it to the customer to find a suitable router though, but might give some suggestions.

The routers I've seen use it as a combo jack along with another RJ45 10GB, not only as a WAN port
And so happens to have another 10gb RJ45 separately as well

 

[blunden]

The routers I've seen use it as a combo jack along with another RJ45 10GB, not only as a WAN port
And so happens to have another 10gb RJ45 separately as well

Sure, but it's not like they made sure to have both a WAN and LAN SFP+ port because they thought that would be a desirable feature.

To be clear, I still hope it will become more widespread.

 

[bonox]

consumer switches with sfp won't appear until motherboards start coming with sfp.

There's a reason consumer RJ45 is popular - it's because majority of consumers are buying boards with that socket. I look around and see practically no-one in my life who has ever bought a NIC - it's either wifi or what the board came with.

As for 25Gbit internet connections, notwithstanding my hatred of most people's belief that network speed = internet speed, how is that being used exactly? There would have to be a tiny fraction of consumers who have a storage subsystem capable of ingesting that kind of bandwidth (consumer NVMe craps out pretty quickly on big writes) - and you couldn't be using it live, because streaming 8K sources doesn't even come close to 1% of that bandwidth. Latency is not a reason either - I doubt a 25Gb connection comes with significantly lower latency than a 1Gb or even the 50Mb connection i'm currently on.

Also, just out of interest, how many internet facing servers out there can or will deliver that kind of bandwidth to a consumer? Can't be many who'd be interested in cloud backup at that kind of pace for the price it would cost and netflix or mylocalnews.com are not likely candidates

 

[Stephan]

You're hard-pressed to find a use case for 25 Gbps in consumer environments. So the answer might be "never" or "very long". Datacenter sure, r/datahoarder and ZFS people no question, but nothing in consumer space. Even the highest bandwidth video stream fits into 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps easy. Consumers also don't tolerate 1U fan noise. 25 Gbps ports need beefy ASICs with a few watts per port, like 5. So your 8-port consumer switch with transceivers will eat 40 watts. Too much to cool passively and silently in a small case. Also chicken and egg problem: 25 Gbps will increase the BOM cost and make devices expensive to produce. Yet nobody can use it at home, because 1 out of 10.000 or less can explain QSFP to mother, and got enterprisey gear to connect it to. Everybody else has copper RJ45. 25 Gbps is also one full DVD every 2 seconds and already a strain if your storage does suck only a little.

At one point silicon chips might have fiber transceivers on-chip and all that is connected will be 5 volts, ground, and a bunch of petabit fiber connectors to RAM or wherever. This will be the jump. 10, 20 years out.

 

[sic0048]

All of you that are saying that 25gb will never come to consumers are looking at this from a "logical" point of view. The thing you are missing is that consumers don't use logic in their buying decisions 99% of the time.

Manufacturers will build and sell these to the "consumer market" and regular people will buy them strictly because "25gb is better than 10gb/5gb/2.5gb/1gb". They will sell a ton of these devices to people that will never come close to needing a fraction of that speed . Most people have no idea what they really need and just want "the best". These devices will be markets to consumers as being "better" and worth the expense because they are faster.

It's the same reason people sign up for mega-fast internet service when the greatest load their network sees is when they stream "TV" to 4 different devices at the same time. They could use the lowest tier service and get exactly the same results, but they happily pay 3-4 times more for "faster" service (and then brag about how fast their service is).

 

[OP_Reinfold]

"consumers", illiterate monkeys, most believe everything they see in the media, buy things they don't really need, then they complain when they realise they have a reason to complain, because they believed everything they see in the media, and because they bought things they don't really need.... LOL - hopefully the world will go back to 'reality' like it was before huge crowds of people went all 'magical', woke, dumbed-down, black-and-white-lacking-nuance... sadly the 'facebook' disease spread into the real-world, and it isn't looking like it will be cured anytime soon.

On topic, I'd love to see 25G as a standard uplink port on mid-tier switches, 10G is getting on a bit now.

 

[lavalake]

Why would you bother with 25Gbps when you can find white-box switches on the SONiC OS compatibility list for a couple hundred and can cross-flash $10 CX354As with 40GbE and use SMF with 2 kilometer range with CWDM4 transceivers?

 

[pimposh]

How "SONiC OS" fit's into question asked by OP specifically "affordable consumer" ?

 

[lavalake]

How "SONiC OS" fit's into question asked by OP specifically "affordable consumer" ?

Anyone can spend $22 per port on 40 gigabit, can't they? Who can't afford a $200 switch and a flash drive to flash SONiC from ONIE Rescue? An AI can tell you how to bring the entire thing up easily. I assume they can use an AI?

 

[pimposh]

No pun mister but you completely miss what is affordable and consumer grade in this discussion. Eg. Start with fact that none of consumers use price per port factor.

Before low end consumer (ssds,internet access,volume of data requiring bandwith greater than 2,5Gbps) market will mature/develop, business wise there is no point of any investment in that sector since no one is going to benefit. Not to mention current fiber connectors are way to fragile for average mary and joe. No magic here.

 

[lavalake]

If anyone's considering 25 gigabit, then they're not a normal consumer. Most consumers use cell phones and WiFi. They don't care about much of the wired backhaul except that the cable that connects them with their ISP is fast enough to get what they're paying for. I assume that anyone who still uses a full-fledged computer would like to get the best deal they can. I watch a lot of homesteading channels on YouTube who went to the extent of learning how to drive power equipment and renting it to run their own fiber, others building towers for WiFi meshes, and so on. And I also watch a lot of handywomen who build their own decks, fences, do their own roofing, fix their own appliances, and so on in addition to handymen doing the same. Whether man or woman, people like saving money, and a lot of working class people watch YouTube and do their own car and house repairs. I assume that if someone knew they could put a few hundred down now and ultra-cheap OS2 cable, they could be at 40 g or go up to 100 for $60-70 per computer. And that they'd pay $200-400 for a switch that can run 4 times faster than the $650-900 25g options listed by the OP. So I'm guessing you're a troll or you've never met a human before. Humans like deals.

 

[pimposh]

I assume that anyone

There have been many dictators, despots in the history of the world.

If anyone's considering 25 gigabit, then they're not a normal consumer.

640 kb should be enough for everyone, right ?
As everything evolves, one day your favourite YouTube channel might need 20Gbps for 80K400Hz.

What's the thread topic ? How long before we see affordable 25Gbit devices.

Respecting the interlocutor means being able to answer the questions asked and not answering questions that nobody asked.

And that they'd pay $200-400 for a switch that can run 4 times faster than the $650-900 25g options listed by the OP. So I'm guessing you're a troll or you've never met a human before. Humans like deals.

And you do not see difference between quiet desktop switch (got both of MicroTik's listed by OP) and ex-DC-without warranty racked stuff (use'em as well).

Most people aren't called Beethoven.

Supossedly there is one trolling here. Who's that?

I watch a lot of homesteading channels on YouTube who went to the extent of learning how to drive power equipment and renting it to run their own fiber, others building towers for WiFi meshes, and so on. And I also watch a lot of handywomen who build their own decks, fences, do their own roofing, fix their own appliances, and so on in addition to handymen doing the same

I really hope that you are not about opening your own channel.

 

[lavalake]

I do have my own channel. I'm not here to advertise it. Waste money if you want. The OP's question is unanswerable. Or do you claim to know the future? What's a crystal ball running these days? What value are YOU adding to the thread? ZERO.

 

[lavalake]

I'm bowing out of here due to adolescent attacks that offer no value to the thread whatsoever and amount to complaints that an alternative was offered. I would suggest skipping 25G altogether. You'd be buying into a technology that will have an extremely short life-span. Its life span in the data center I work in was very short-lived as well. For fan noise you can alter the fancontrol PWM params in SONiC and replace the fans. A lot of people doing a solid for the Earth and rescuing this would-be e-waste by turning it into something useful (e.g. HP Plexxi fabric reflash to SONiC) put them in their basement. I recently gave a reflashed switch to a departing co-worker who got cost-saving laid-off and he put it in his shed in back of his house. Good luck, happy theorycrafting.

 

[Stephan]

Respecting the interlocutor means being able to answer the questions asked and not answering questions that nobody asked.

Looks like you had a bad day. There is a saying where I live that goes like: If you build near the street, you will have many master craftsmen. Aren't all threads on the Internet like that. ;-) Why judge...

The only thing coming of it will be your face mounted on Mr T in an AI video where he shouts "HOW LONG IN SECONDS SINCE 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UNTIL 25 GIGABIT COMES TO THE CONSUMER ??!! IN __time64_t YOU FOOL!" at a little girl. To which she defiantly replies: "Has the gold around your neck been cutting off the blood supply to your brain a little much?" (age-compressed 5 year olds these days...) Angrily she punches him in the gut, shouting "this is for InfiniBand" and runs away. A 90 year old man with a kane going just by his initials PK looks up from the road and mumbles "Mhm, I have seen this before. Dufus even forgot the timezone, again". Cut to credits.

 

[bonox]

All of you that are saying that 25gb will never come to consumers are looking at this from a "logical" point of view. The thing you are missing is that consumers don't use logic in their buying decisions 99% of the time.

We're not really. The same group of people you're talking about are the ones who can be sold $5000 audiophile power cables. That market is vanishingly small in the context of 'consumer market' and are probably better lumped in with the sellers who will do something until until the market quickly dries up or becomes illegal. (Like the illogical "this crystal will heal your ills" kind of deal).

Also, we're kind of talking about 25Gb to consumers in its current form. There's no doubt 25Gb+ will exist on mobile devices or even in your sci fi implants in future - it just won't be soon and it won't be the same format as you're expecting now (heat/power/noise/price/module interoperability issues/etc). I'm still yet to see a consumer motherboard/NIC/switch using fibre of any kind and 25Gb over RJ45 just doesn't work. Even those 4 port 10gb switches bought by most consumers are probably filled with RJ45 pluggables.

 

[bonox]

. I assume they can use an AI?

nope - you're talking about mass market here. How many people do you think ever updated a bios if it wasn't a single click windows based process. Heck, how many updated a firmware/bios full stop? The only reason phones get updates is because it's seamless from the users point of view. Click Yes to over the air update/wait/auto-reset.

Again though, what are these high speed networks connected to? Because the rest of the consumer gear storage subsystem it'll be plugged into won't handle that kind of bandwidth and you're not streaming from anywhere at that rate. And that's where this little discussion gets fruity. There's no point buying a Chiron if all you have to drive it on is a rutted dirt track full of horse drawn carts. Sure, @sic might be able to convince a few to buy them, but that's not exactly a consumer market.

Also, a huge portion of the consumer market now (for networked devices at least) are laptops, tablets and phones. Where are they going to plug these things into that 25Gb switch?

Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats

This graph shows the market share of desktop vs mobile vs tablet worldwide based on over 5 billion monthly page views.

gs.statcounter.com

 

[sic0048]

We're not really. The same group of people you're talking about are the ones who can be sold $5000 audiophile power cables.

We'll just have to disagree. The people I'm talking about are the people out there paying for 300/300, 500/500, and faster internet service even when they only use about 20/5 at their peak. Yet they gladly pay for faster service because it is "better". Most normal consumers have no idea what "network speeds" they need and consistently over estimate their actual needs. 25gb consumer grade devices will be sold to this group of people, and it's MUCH larger than some niche audiophile group. In fact, I would bet that 75% of your neighborhood falls into this category of people.