Relatively cheap 10GB netwroking

[user1453]

Hi Guys

I've been looking into 10GBps networking recently and think I might have found a relatively cheap entry vector.

The D-link DGS-1510-20 is available for £163 and has 2 10G SPF+ ports.
http://www.dlink.com/uk/en/business-...naged-switches

The Brocade 1020 card is available for around £25-40 second hand on ebay and supports SPF+
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_fr...e+1020&_sop=15

Has anyone had a chance to use any of these parts

[Jonatron]

Well the switch has a couple of good reviews.
This thread says the brocade card only supports brocade branded SFP+ modules: https://forums.servethehome.com/inde...ie-cards.2955/

You might want to order a card that comes with an SFP+ module if you don't want to faff about: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/381024994951
Or you could get cheap compatible ones from china if you're patient from http://fiberstore.com/

If you only want to connect 2 PCs via a switch, isn't that 1 SFP+ module per PC and 2 in the switch? Might not be as cheap as you think to do this. Gigabit link aggregation would be cheaper, although obviously slower + more cables.

[TotesTurtle]

Would be nice to have a 10Gbps NAS and take my noisy HDDs out of my pc, but still too expensive for me

[user1453]

in my case the computer and the switch are less than 5m apart so I was just intending on using a DAC cable

[Splash]

if you're only connecting 2 devices is there any reason that you can't just use a point to point connection (ie why do you need a switch)?

If you need switching then there are a number of people who are using Infiniband in home lab situations

[badass]

Gigabit link aggregation would be cheaper, although obviously slower + more cables.

Gigabit link aggregation would indeed be cheaper, slower and need more cables but in the vast majority of use cases, no faster than a single Gigabit link.
The thing about link aggregation is that the most granular form is still a per connection load balancing algorithm (Static/LACP etherchannel). Single client to single server will still only see 1Gbit. Multiple client to single server will most likely see more links used as will multiple server to single client.

Perhaps you think that iSCSI with MPIO can be used to use multiple links? Unfortunately, every iSCSI setup I have used professionally and personally is still only using the bandwidth of a single link as their best practice prevents multiple links being effectively used, even with round robin load balancing Why? They gimp it by insisting that the algorithm only switches paths every few thousand packets.

Maybe iSCSI with MCS? Good luck with that. Works but still single client to single server sees 1 Gbit.

So far, the only exception I can think of is SMB multichannel. I've never tried to set it up though so cannot comment on it's effectiveness.

Should anyone disagree with this, by all means have a go. I'd be interested to see a home setup where single client to single server gets the bandwidth of at least 2 ports but I suspect that most will end up wasting many hours and still be no closer.

This is why I'm waiting for cheaper 10Gbe. I'm not interested in any of the more exotic fibre/infiniband solutions as my house is cabled up for 10 GBe and I want spinning disks to be as far away from MY PC as possible.

In case anyone is wondering, CAT6 cabling infrastructure IS rated to 10Gbit, however the length limit is 40m (low noise) or 55m (high noise) A lot of so called professionals will tell you otherwise however.

[DanceswithUnix]

If you only want a few ports, then you could make your own switch from a Linux box with a couple of those cards plugged in?

Or avoid the whole thing entirely: You can buy quite a lot of SSDs these days for the cost of a good 10GbE switch, and I really don't think I want a bad switch in the house. The switches tend to have big fans in them as well as they are intended for machine rooms, I don't remember seeing a consumer one yet.

So if you really need a huge amount of storage, then a raid array of laptop drives should be cheap and about as noisy as a single fan.

If you want whisper quiet, then £300 quid buys you nearly 1TB of SSD http://www.ebuyer.com/497437-crucial...-ct960m500ssd1