Multigigabit situation, February 2020

Multigigabit is a technology for wired LAN connections where the speed exceeds 1 Gbps. In the recent times a lot of new equipment was announced, supporting this technology, this article tries to summarize what is available today and on what price.

In professional datacenter environment, 10G network is already depreciated and there are stable 25G, 40G, 100G and 400G solutions. These high speed technologies are still very costly, in a home environment it is difficult to find applications and equipment which require it and can handle it.

In this article we will deal with the speeds above 1G and up till 10G.

10 Gigabit Ethernet

This is an older technology and on optical lines it was implemented long time ago.

For a more detailed description read the related article on Wikipedia. As in the DataCenters these equipment is becoming obsolete, you can find cheap second had equipment for them. The standard equipment is equipped with SFP+ ports and you need and SFP+ module for the connection.

To start with it you will need a network adatper:

Mellanox 10G SFP+ PCIe x8 Card - 6 EUR
Mellanox Dual 10G SFP+ PCIe x8 Card - 45 USD

Direct connections

If the computers are close to each other, you can use DAC (direct attach cable, a cable where the cable and the modules on the two end are soldered together):

1M 10G SFP+ DAC cable - 10 USD
5M 10G SFP+ DAC cable - 18 USD

Optical connections

If they are further then you can use AOC (Active Optical Cable, an optical cable with modules attached on each end)

15M 10G SFP+ AOC cable - 45 USD

Or you can use separate SFP+ modules and optical patch cables:

10G SFP+ SR Module - 18 USD
15M LC-LC Duplex Multimode Patch cable - 10 USD

You should note, that in this case AOC and separate modules costs approximately the same. If you have to install your cable in small holes and tight places, then you are better off with the separate cable as you cann pull it trough smaller holes.

Copper cables - 10GBASE-T

Another option for the SFP+ adaters is to use modules supporting 10GB RJ45 copper as the transmission media. For this speed Cat6A or better cables are needed, so most probably you can not run it on your existing Cat5 cabling.

The 10GBASE-T SFP+ modules are a bit pricier, but there are modells supporting slower speeds like 1G, 2.5G and 5G, which makes them a good choice for a mixed home network.

10G SFP+ module supporting slower speeds - 50 USD
1M Cat6A patch cable - 3 USD
10M Cat6A patch cable - 8 USD

There are adapters with fixed 10GBASE-T connectors, here there is no need for the SFP+ adapter:

Home targeted:
TRENDnet PCIe x4 10GBASE-T adapter supporting slower speeds - 120 USD
ASUS PCIe x4 10GBASE-T adapter supporting lower speeds - 150 USD

Server targeted:
Dual 10GBASE-T PCIe x8 Adapter - 62 USD

2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T

This technology is based on the 10GBASE-T, but they work on the more available Cat 5e cables.

Recently USB3.0 based devices appeared on the market, which makes is possible to connect laptops and mini desktop PC-s to higher speed:

2.5G USB3.0 Adapter - 36 USD
5G USB-C Adapter - 132 USD
10G Tunderbolt adapter - 160 USD

And also PCIe adapters are becoming cheaper:

2.5G PCIe x1 Adapter - 30 USD

PCIe x8, x4, x1

When looking at adapters, we should pay attention to the available PCIe slots on out motherboard. Usually on desktop motherboards there are no x8 connectors, there are only x16 connectors, where you can fit the x8 card, but they are usually reserved for the video card. So if you plan to use adapter cards designed for servers, you should check your motherboard for available x16 slots.

There are 3 options for x8 PCIe cards:
  1. You have a processor with built in graphics, then you can use the x16 slot for your network card
  2. You have a mainboard with support for dual video, then you can use the second x16 slot for the network card (be aware,  that it may have actually only x4 speed)
  3. You may buy an PCIe x1 video card like this, and use the x16 for the network card.
PCIe x4 slots are not on every motherboard, but there are a lot of motherboards supporting it. So before buying a 10G x4 card, first check if it is supported by your motherboard.

The PCIe x1 is commonly available in desktop computers, it should not be a problem to install a 2.5G PCIe x1 adapter in any desktop PC.

Switches

As we could see the adapters are generally available, but if you have a network with more computers you will need to use switches to connect everything together.

It may be tempting to use and old computer, install a lot of adapters into it, run a Linux distribution on it and configure it as a network switch, but because of the PCIe connection problems mentioned above and as an old computers processing capability may limit the network throughput, it is better to use a dedicated switch.

Depending on your need for multigigabit ports there are several options to choose form:

Aruba S2500-24P  - 4*SFP+ and 24*Gigabit - 70 USD

Used datacenter switch with 4 10G SFP+ and 24 Gigabit port. A cheap solution, but you will have to buy additional SFP+ modules or SFP+ cables to connect the rest of the network. It may be laud, so you have to find a place where it is not disturbing.

Mikrotik CSS326-24G-2S+ - 2*SFP+ and 24*Gigabit - 139 USD

If you need only 2 high speed connection, this can do it.

Mikrotik CSR305-1g-4s+IN - 4*SFP+ and 1*Gigabit - 149 USD

This switch is only for 10G, you have to use other switch for normal Gigabit.

Mikrotik CSR328-24P-4S+RM - 4*SFP+ and 24*Gigabit - 379 USD

Same features as the Aruba, but a brand new.

ASUS XG-U2008 - 2*10GBASE-T and 8*Gigabit - 262 USD

Consumer class switch (non managed), but it is relatively pricely compared to the features it offers.

Netgear GS110EMX - 2*10GBASE-T and 8*Gigabit - 190 USD

Cheaper than the ASUS XG-U2008 and managed.

Netgear MS510TX - 1*SFP+ and 1*10GBASE-T and 2*5GBASE-T and 2*2.5GBASE-T and 4*Gigabit - 270 USD

With 6 above gigabit ports it is a good choice for home, for example you can connect the NAS to the 10G port, the desktop computers to the 5G ports and the laptops wired connections to the 2.5G ports and anything else can go to the 1G ports.

Netgear XS708E -  1* SFP+ and 8*10GBASE-T - 580 USD

A bit more expensive, but has 8 ports with full 10G support and an additional SFP+ port.

Zyxel XGS1210-12 - 2*SFP+ and 2*2.5GBASE-T and 8*Gigabit - 165 USD

Not so many multigigabit ports, but good price.

Zyxel XGS1010-12 - 2*SFP+ and 2*2.5GBASE-T and 8*Gigabit - 145 USD

Same as the above but non manageable.

Trendnet TEG-30102WS - 2*SFP+ and 8*2.5GBASE-T - 495 USD

A lot of 2.5G ports for a high price.


It is advantageous if you have the same switch serving your multigigabit and gigabit connections, because this was the link between the gigabit switch and multigigabit switch will not become a bottleneck. If you have to use 2 switches, you can handle this either by having a 10G connection between your multigig and gigabit switch or you can use channel bundling. The later uses several 1G connections to create aggregated bandwidth between the switches.

WiFi AP with multigigabit

I did not do an extensive research on WiFi APs supporting multigigabit LAN interfaces, but found same:

EnGenius EnSky EWS377AP Wi-Fi 6 - 1*2.5GBASE-T, WiFi6 - 310 USD
Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 - 1*2.5GBASE-T, WiFi6 - 430 USD
TP-Link WiFi 6 AX6000 - 1*2.5GBASE-T, WiFi6 - 300 USD

To use it you need an adapter, for example:

EDUP WiFi 6 PCIe x1 Adapter - 27 USD

NAS with Multigigabit

Multigigabit supported NASes are high end expensive modells, but you can try to use an external USB3.0 adapter:

QNAP UC5G1T - 5GBASE-T USB3.0 - 207 USD

Or you can try the open source package for Synology NAS: https://github.com/bb-qq/r8152

So there are plenty of options, now it is a bit early for a full multigigabit network, but the road is there, so probably in a few years, it will be natural to have multigigabit in our home.

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