Want to Go 10Gbe or 40Gbe - advice on how proceed wanted

[Kneelbeforezod]

I'd like some advice on how to go 10Gbe or 40Gbe. I've been reading some of the post and looking on Ebay but not sure exactly what to get. I need more home network speed. I have currently 6 wired computers and then various laptops, tablets, phones. But its' the 6 Computers that do the real work with Video capture or CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and Fox Biz. Part of the reason i am asking is that the ethernet ports on workstation are kaput so i' using a spare WIFI adapter right now till i get my haswell xeons up and running. What i'd like to have is both wifi for the wireless devices and then 10 or 40 gbe for the wires boxes. I know about the various mellanox cards and they're pretty cheap. Just don't know what else to get. Have Comcast and a Netgear router currently - AC1900 i think. And i saw about the thread about the those Microtik boxes. Just not sure what to do.

So i though this might be a good time to Faster.

thanks.

 

[MiniKnight]

Six devices means you need a switch.

Can you run fiber to all of the locations or need to use existing wiring?

That determines most of the rest. Then what kinda machines. You'll need a switch for 6 devices.

 

[Kneelbeforezod]

Six devices means you need a switch.

Can you run fiber to all of the locations or need to use existing wiring?

That determines most of the rest. Then what kinda machines. You'll need a switch for 6 devices.

So they're all windows machins - Two Haswell Core I5, One Ivy core I5, One AMD A8, a 4570 Machine, dual xeon worstation. All run windows 7 OR 10

I've got Ethernet run now nothing fancy just all in a straight line since they are all in the great room

 

[MiniKnight]

If they are all in the same room, and you can easily cable them:

Get 6x Intel x520-da2 cards Intel/Dell X520-DA2 10Gb 10Gbe 10 Gigabit Network Adapter NIC Dual E10G42BTDA
Get 6x FS Intel sfp+ and 6x more for the switch
Get 6x OM3 optical cables depending on the size you need
Get https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-US-16-XG-16-Port-Aggregation/dp/B01N5QOK0K/

You'll have 10g Ethernet for under $200 per machine and more importantly you have a switch that has more capacity and a bridge to 1g copper networks.

Why not 40G? You need a pcie 3.0 x8 for those cards.

 

[Rand__]

You also might have CPU issues trying to push 10G+ on the lower end devices so you'd need hardware support means newer gen nics:/
Also - are those 6 boxes equipped with (used) enterprise level ssds? or drive arrays?
Else you will have issues keeping up high speeds for longer time anyway ...

If you only need burst (couple of gigs at a a time) or "something faster than 1G" you might be good though

 

[i386]

Spoiler: ot

You also might have CPU issues trying to push 10G+ on the lower end devices so you'd need hardware support means newer gen nics:/

I think all >10gbe nics have hardware support/offload (original 10gbe standard is from 2002, that's pentium 4/pre prescott/single core xeons era). Current cpus should be able to handle that bandwidth.

 

[Rand__]

Spoiler: ot

I think all >10gbe nics have hardware support/offload (original 10gbe standard is from 2002, that's pentium 4/pre prescott/single core xeons era). Current cpus should be able to handle that bandwidth.

Well I ran some AT2's a while back and while they had TCP RX/TX offload they still used to need windows OS tuning (more queues, more cores) to use the 10G - still with a significant CPU load.
Desktop was using i5-3330 iirc so not too bad - not sure how the A8 would fare - the rest is probably good but depends also on other activites (encoding) going on in the meantime o/c

 

[Kneelbeforezod]

So the only computer that does any ecoding is the xeons. All the other just record using cyberlink power director and chinese capture cards. They record as mpg and i then later convert to mp4 as need to save space.

 

[Kneelbeforezod]

If they are all in the same room, and you can easily cable them:

Get 6x Intel x520-da2 cards Intel/Dell X520-DA2 10Gb 10Gbe 10 Gigabit Network Adapter NIC Dual E10G42BTDA
Get 6x FS Intel sfp+ and 6x more for the switch
Get 6x OM3 optical cables depending on the size you need
Get https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-US-16-XG-16-Port-Aggregation/dp/B01N5QOK0K/

You'll have 10g Ethernet for under $200 per machine and more importantly you have a switch that has more capacity and a bridge to 1g copper networks.

Why not 40G? You need a pcie 3.0 x8 for those cards.

So why not get the cheaper mellanox cards?

 

[MiniKnight]

So why not get the cheaper mellanox cards?

ConnectX2 is nearing end of support if it isn't already past due. It'll work, but I like spending slightly more just to not worry about drivers.

 

[i386]

Connectx-2 are end of life for mellanox, but hp offers support for them till 2020.
Also the connectx-2 uses the same driver that connectx-3/4 uses ("mlx4eth").

 

[Rand__]

So the only computer that does any ecoding is the xeons. All the other just record using cyberlink power director and chinese capture cards. They record as mpg and i then later convert to mp4 as need to save space.

So does the Xeon encode 500 MB/s? Or whats the aggregated rate? Divided by clients gives you the needed bandwith wich might be 10G for the Xeons and maybe only 1GB on client side. Are the clients equipped to receive 100 MB/s for longer period (how long per encoding run) ?

 

[Kneelbeforezod]

Thanks for the advice. I like the idea of the Mellanoxs since they're cheap and the're still support for them.
And that way if they don't serve the need i'm not out a lot and alway go to the intels