Multi building 10GbE setup at home

[Pallee]

Hi!

tl;dr I need advice on finding new switches and if I should run fiber or cat6a copper cable between buildings.

I have recently moved to a new house in southern Sweden with a separate garagae/workshop that intend to partly use as networking closet with my TrueNAS, pfSense, VM-host etc. and still have my and my SO's workstation in the main living area together with Wifi AP etc. I have yet to run any cables and right now everything runs over Wifi except the NAS. Suboptimal to say the least...

My "current" (before the move) setup is a 10GbaseT band-aid solution that was cobbled together a couple of years back due to available parts and a student budget... I am proud of THAT it kinda "works", not HOW it works if you catch my drift... eg. don't judge what is, but give me pointers on new or used equipment to get a multi building 10 GbE setup. This time I want to do it right.

Current networking equipment:
NAS based on a Supermicro X10SDV-8C-TLN4F (integrated x540-T2 NIC)
pfSense router in an older Dell Optiplex with 1 intel I350 (4x 1GbaseT) and 1 Intel x710-T4 (4x 10GbaseT)
Workstation: intel x540-T2
SO's WS: integrated I217-V, but thinking of installing an x540-T2
VM-host: integrated whatever 1GbaseT it works, apparently...

At the moment the router have 1 port for WAN and the other 7 bridged as a very low performing switch, netting about 5-8Gbps throughput on the 10 gig lines. Please note the distinct lack of a decent 10 gig switch as that was way out of my budget at the time.

My current reasoning is to get two switches that have both SFP+ and 10GbaseT (RJ45) and run a multimode fiber between the garage and main. However I cannot wrap my head around all the different switches and SFP+ transceivers (some of which may be vendor locked), do I need a managed or unmanaged switch.

Cheers!

 

[mach3.2]

Conventional wisdom is to run fibre if your end point have different ground or you're making runs to another building, which you correctly pointed out.

I suppose the actual question is this:

do I need a managed or unmanaged switch.

A managed switch will allow you the flexibility to run multiple VLANs across your fibre link, whereas an unmanaged switch will leave you stucked on 1 LAN.

What you end up buying depends on what your end goals are.

 

[Pallee]

Well I suppose fiber it is for the inter-building link then. Electrical isolation is a good thing.

A managed switch will allow you the flexibility to run multiple VLANs across your fibre link, whereas an unmanaged switch will leave you stucked on 1 LAN.

That is a very good point. My WAN connection comes in to my main building. If I go with managed switches, would it be possible to run that in the same fiber via VLAN link to my garage, or would I need a separate run to my router? I am really novice on the networking side of things...

 

[mach3.2]

That is a very good point. My WAN connection comes in to my main building. If I go with managed switches, would it be possible to run that in the same fiber via VLAN link to my garage, or would I need a separate run to my router? I am really novice on the networking side of things...

Yup, that can be done.

 

[kpfleming]

Other benefits of fiber over copper: higher speeds possible; lower power consumption at the endpoints for the same speeds; easier to add redundancy (bidirectional links over single fibers).

 

[Pallee]

Do you guys have any recommendations on what type of switch I should look at (or stay away from)? Noise is a concern in the main living area. I was thinking on two Qnap qsw-m408 with a mix of SFP+/RJ45 combo ports as well as 8x 1gig RJ45 ports. One in the main house and one in the garage. They are roughly in my budget (about 1000 USD for the entire project, it is not a hard cap though). Right now, we don't have that many wired clients, but would like an upgrade path if we decide to add PoE cameras or access points in the future. From what I can gather, the ability to add a PoE switch on a free SFP+ port would be a satisfactory upgrade path.

I do not intend on running any high availability services at home, and don't have any mission critical things running (apart from the wifi/tv/netflix-box etc. according to my SO ).

Other benefits of fiber over copper: higher speeds possible; lower power consumption at the endpoints for the same speeds; easier to add redundancy (bidirectional links over single fibers).

That is true, but won't that increase the installation cost substantially on the transceiver side of things? Or can I simply install a duplex multimode fiber now, and repurpose it as 2x bi-directional links later?

 

[kpfleming]

You can install a duplex single-mode (not multimode) cable, and use it today as a 10GbE link with inexpensive SFP+ modules. Later if needed you can convert that into 2 10GbE links using BiDi modules. Of course you could also install 4 or 8 fibers, the actual cost for the fiber cable tends to be a small part of the overall equation.

Keep in mind that SFP+ fiber modules are not at all expensive; I'm using 10GbE BiDi modules from 10gtek.com and they are $59 for the pair (a complete 10GbE bidirectional link).

 

[Sean Ho]

SFP+ has been around for longer than 10GbaseT, and hence is cheaper for NICs and especially switches. Aruba S2500 or ICX6450 are cheap 4xSFP+ options. Your two workstations and the VM host appear to have sufficient PCIe slots to pop in a CX312 or similar. The X10SDV's single PCIe is probably occupied by an HBA, so you may want a S+RJ10 or similar for that. If your ISP connection is not greater than gigabit, you do not need a 10GbE NIC on your router.