Is now the time to go to 5 Gbps or 10 Gbps home networking?

[ng4ever]

Has it been for a while ?

If so what do I need ?

Most important question is cat 5e cable fast enough for up to 10 Gbps or only 2 Gbps to 5 Gbps ?

 

[bbunge]

Before you invest in higher bandwidth LAN ask yourself if you really need it and do you want to spend big bucks? CAT5e properly installed might do 2.5 Gbps. But is it properly installed and tested?

You likely do not utilize a 1 Gbps LAN connection fully. So, save your money...

 

[TheLostSwede]

Has it been for a while ?

Depends on what you're willing to pay really, but 10 Gbps is nowhere close to 2.5 Gbps costs and as far as 5 Gbps goes, it will only start taking off this year, courtesy of the cheaper 5 Gbps Ethernet ICs from Realtek.

If so what do I need ?

That depends on your needs, but there are next to no 5 Gbps switches. Plenty of 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps options out there.

Most important question is cat 5e cable fast enough for up to 10 Gbps or only 2 Gbps to 5 Gbps ?

Cat 5e is good enugh for 2.5 and 5 Gbps, but not 10 Gbps. You need Cat 6 for runs of up to 50 meters, Cat 6A for up to 100 meters.

I've been running 10 Gbps between my PC and NAS for over five years, but finally invested in a five port 10 Gbps switch and will be able to have more 10 Gbps devices once we move into our new place.

 

[ddaenen1]

Honestly, i wouldn't know why i would need that right now. As long i cannot get 10 Gbps on the WAN side, i don't see the point. My ISPs highest offering is 1000/50 which is more that i need to for my purposes, even if i have Nextcloud running that i use for my business. Even with 3/4 devices streaming at 4K, there is no bottleneck. My router is 10 Gbps ready but none of my other equipment is and i looked at 10 Gbps switches and the price doesn't justify the gain right now.

 

[RMerlin]

2.5 Gbps is the current sweet spot. Almost everything significative (except some dinosaurs like Synology...) supports 2.5 Gbps out of the box now.

Don't stare at the 10 Gbps mirage - going from 1 Gbps to 2.5 Gbps is currently affordable, and still more than doubles the throughput between your PC and your NAS, reaching the throughput limit of a regular HDD. 10 Gbps is very expensive, and would be faster than the drives in a regular NAS could support anyway. Unless you're rich enough to get NICs, switches, and high capacity SSDs for the NAS to be able to keep up.

An 8 x 2.5 Gbps network switch can be had for around $100 these days. I completed the upgrade of my own LAN to 2.5 Gbps last autumn once these switches became affordable, and stopped dropping in price every two weeks. I even got one for $150 CAD that offered PoE, so I could power my office IP Phone with it. My desktop disk imaging are now able to move at over 200 MB/s to my NAS.

 

[Tech9]

I don't see why I need to look what someone else is running to decide what I need. Obviously the needs, goals and budgets are all different. I do have 10GbE links on my business networks and only where needed. What is 10GbE good for an access point or accounting PC, for example? My home network is Gigabit and does everything I need to do at home. No plans to update it any time soon. Got some new AX-class access points recently and that's it.

 

[sfx2000]

As others mention - 2.5Gbe is the sweet spot, and price per port is coming down quickly...

That being said - gigabit ethernet is essentially free these days, and for most, it's "good enough"...

 

[TheLostSwede]

Honestly, i wouldn't know why i would need that right now. As long i cannot get 10 Gbps on the WAN side, i don't see the point. My ISPs highest offering is 1000/50 which is more that i need to for my purposes, even if i have Nextcloud running that i use for my business. Even with 3/4 devices streaming at 4K, there is no bottleneck. My router is 10 Gbps ready but none of my other equipment is and i looked at 10 Gbps switches and the price doesn't justify the gain right now.

You clearly don't back up your PC or copy any larger amounts of data over your network, so in that case, maybe it's not what you need, but for many of us, 10 Gpbs has been a game changer. I used to edit a bit of video and being able to use my NAS to dump all that content on, instead of having it taking up space on my SSD was a game changer using 10 Gbps, as it ended up being like having a local drive. It meant I didn't have to copy the files back and forth and having to wait 10-15 minutes to do so. Your use case is not everyone elses use case.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Don't stare at the 10 Gbps mirage - going from 1 Gbps to 2.5 Gbps is currently affordable, and still more than doubles the throughput between your PC and your NAS, reaching the throughput limit of a regular HDD. 10 Gbps is very expensive, and would be faster than the drives in a regular NAS could support anyway. Unless you're rich enough to get NICs, switches, and high capacity SSDs for the NAS to be able to keep up.

Sorry, but I don't agree at all with you here. With the right RAID setup you can easily get spinning rust to perform well enough to justify 10 Gbps if you have a four drive NAS or bigger. I built a DIY NAS with 10 Gbps Ethernet over five years ago and sequential data transfers can be just as fast as from a SATA SSD.
Also, the four Aquantia 10 Gbps NICs I have, I've paid less than $60 for. Yes, all bought during sales, but it doesn't have to cost insane money.
Not disagreeing with the rest of your thoughts here though.

 

[glens]

... you can easily get spinning rust to perform well enough ...

Love that phraseology...

 

[coxhaus]

If you do much work local then 10 gig backbone will help you. It is probably more small business cases but not always.
When you add a lot of drives RAID gets very fast. You are still limited by the controller speed.

 

[glens]

I know that upgrading my backbone from 1Gb to 2.5 was highly welcome, even having "just" 500Mb symmetrical outside feed.

 

[sfx2000]

Friends over at ServeTheHome have a running series on small switches that support 2.5Gbe and 10Gbe for some...

The Ultimate Cheap Fanless 2.5GbE Switch Buyers Guide

We test 15+ fanless 2.5GbE switches to see which are the top picks, which have cool features, and which ones are simply overpriced

www.servethehome.com

 

[coxhaus]

I am a layer 3 switch fan boy so it will be a Cisco switch for me. And I am not sold on 2.5Gbe. I don't see it really helping me. If they could get the heat down on 10Gbe then I am in. Until then I think 1GBe for a client and 10Gbe for the backbone. Cisco does sale 2.5Gbe and 10Gbe layer 3 switches. I gave up on my Cisco wireless APs that were 2.5Gbe and switched back to more 1 Gbe Cisco APs. Having more APs 1Gbe seems like a better solution to me.
And I need at least 10 ports. It is what I am currently using. And I guess if I had more ports, I would probably fill them.

PS
I noticed Negear has a switch with POE++ that would be nice for bigger APs.

 

[d5aqoep]

To move past 2.5Gbe speeds at home, You need

1. A 3-4 bay NAS in Raid5-Raid6 so the throughput speeds reach 600-1000 MBps (4.8 Gbps to 9 Gbps)
2. An ISP plan which is 2.5G or more
3. PC and NAS with 10Gbe LAN cards each
4. A switch with at least 2 10Gbe ports.

So it quickly becomes an expensive upgrade for 10Gbe. But if you can manage any 3 at least from above, it’s worth it and makes you future proof for next 10 years unless there is some hardware failure.

 

[ddaenen1]

I don't think i will spend any money on 2.5G or 5G equipment. When i go, i will go directly to 10Gbps. There is one provider that is offering 10Gbps since recently through fiber but unfortunately fiber hasn't arrived to my home yet. Dead-end streets always come last over here.

 

[Hati]

Imho, if you have to ask the answer is no. For me only operation that could benefit from faster network is dumping recordings from DVR to NAS and (if we forget that the DVR has only 1gb port) that is always one time operation that can run at its own pace during night, it doesn't matter if it takes 10 minutes or four hours. If I wanted to edit those recordings there would be some benefit with faster connection between NAS and editing computer.

 

[coxhaus]

I think 2.5gig is not worth the money. You will end up upgrading at least once more maybe twice if you go 5gig first before ending up at 10gig. It is a consumer deal to get more money out of you over the course of the next few years buying and replacing equipment.

I am going to start building my 10gig core. I have a Cisco switch with 4 ports of 10gig which I have not been using because of the fan and my granddaughter staying in that room. She has grown up with a job so she only occasionally stays with us now. So, a fan is OK now. It is pretty quiet and can barely be heard.

My guess is the 10gig VLAN is going to be pretty quick. It will naturally have priority over other slower traffic in the layer 3 switch. It will be its own network with no wireless or slow ports. So, I think it will be really good for gaming. You just need a 10gig NIC in the PC.
It is going to cost me a little more in electricity as 10gig draws more power.

I think most of my cables are CAT6 now and none over 50m. I will replace any that do not work. I have been getting a lot of cheap cables so I expect there will be some cables that don't meet spec. My wireless is all going to stay 1 gig but the aggregate will be able to exceed 1 gig with a 10gig back bone. My internet will not be able to right now. I will be able to perform a backup and push 1 gig of traffic across the 10gig VLAN at the same time as I back up. The 10gig backbone will allow me to maintain full 1gig on multiple ports at the same time

 

[sfx2000]

Yeah - I'll repeat - gigabit ethernet is essentially free on the LAN... Good enough, and once has a WAN bandwidth plan that support GigE, one starts to recognize that it's the internet that's slow...

My ISP has been pinging me on upgrading from 500/50 to 1000/100 for $10USD more a month - and I'm not seeing a good reason here...

Bumping from 250 to 500 to 1GB - it's not much of a difference - it's upstream performance and the host on how it can respond..

 

[tiddlywink]

There is no killer app for regular consumers to justify jumping to 100% 5G-10G network any time soon. For better or worse, 2.5GbE is here to stay, good enough, and is more or less already adopted.

Just this year I went from gigabit to a 2.5G WAN, 2.5G LAN, and 2.5G AP's. It was cheap, easy, fast, used existing cables, fanless, and low power.