Mixing 1/10g on network

[yaxisandxaxis]

Hi = this is my first post here. I've lurked for years.

I've read through all these 10G threads. I've got a pfsense router I made out of an old atom. It has 1g connection to my 1g switch. If I had a 10g switch and uplinked the 1g switch to the 10g switch, how does traffic flow between 10g ports?

Imagine I have this setup
pfsesne > 1g switch > 10g uplink > 10g switch > both workstation and file servers

3 machines workstation and file servers on the 10g switch.

No vlans. All one IP range and only NAT through firewall.

Does traffic need to go all the way through to the pfsense to go workstation to file server or is it all within the 10g switch. If it did, I'd only get 1g speeds and 10g would be useless. I can't add a 10g card to the pfsense so only 1g links from there

Thanks for help in advance.

 

[Aestr]

You should be fine. Based on what you describe everything is on the same subnet so nothing will need to go through a router (pfsense in this case). If it wasn't this way you wouldn't see switches with mostly gigabit ports and a few 10gb ones.

 

[yaxisandxaxis]

You should be fine. Based on what you describe everything is on the same subnet so nothing will need to go through a router (pfsense in this case). If it wasn't this way you wouldn't see switches with mostly gigabit ports and a few 10gb ones.

Would it just be the inter-subnet that would go through the router? Like, if I had a few NUCs and BRIX on 1g for a little Vmware esxi lab, storage would need to go through pfsense. That's ok I'd imagine.

I'm hoping I'm making coherent sense.

 

[Aestr]

If you decided to put them on a different subnet that traverses the router then yes it would go through pfsense. Based on your description it sound like you've chained both switches on the inside port of pfsense. If true then you'd have to go out of your way to need to route between hosts such as creating VLANs. Even if you put some hosts on the 1gb switch by default they will still talk to hosts on the 10gb switch without needing the router but of course still at 1gbit speeds.

Now I'm the one hoping I'm making coherent sense

 

[Brady Webb]

Any traffic not on the same subnet (192.168.1.XXX), would have to go through your router, because that traffic is being "routed" to another subnet. All traffic on the same subnet would communicate over the switch. That's why it has an ARP table.