2.5Gbe Network Hardware - Before You Buy

[@ivanmilenkovic8285]

Thanks for the great article! Just switched to 2.5Gb for the home network. Worth it 100% - Asustor AS5304T NAS to main comp transfer rates jumped from about 110MB/s to 260MB/s in overall

[@peterpapp2876]

2.5 Gbe bandwidth is 280 MB/s in practice and not 250 MB/s. From other point of view it is possible to utilize a direct 2.5 Gbe connection for example between a NAS and PC secondary LAN ports. In this case it is not necessary to use switch or router with multigigabit/10 Gbe ports. Of course in this case only one client can enjoy the advantages of 2.5 Gbe but all other clients have the other full 1 Gbe bandwidth ... WiFi question. WiFi is half-duplex (ethernet is full-duplex) and all clients share the bandwidth. From other point of view there is a relevant difference between theoretical and practical bandwidth in case of WiFi. WiFi is for mobile devices (cell phones, tablets and laptops in some cases) - NAS, PC and game consoles etc. should be wired (otherwise we have trash WiFi) ...

[@neilm9400]

My house is wired with 5e and 6, so 2.5/5/10 auto negotiation is my preferred choice. Wi-fi is left to the phones and tablets. Also I don't want to have the WiFi trying to punch through to many walls, even with a mesh network covering the house.

[@sugarkingfpl]

Can I connect my ISP router which delivers gigabit speeds to a switch 2.5gbe and then connect the switch to a my home router that has 1 port = 2.5gbe ? My intention is to have my NAS and pcs be able to use the wired cat6 cable. Is this viable ? I am new to networking so this idea has been hunting me for a while. Not sure if I can do this connection.

[@nommindymple6241]

I've been looking at switches recently and just realized that all of them have their ports at the front with the power supply at the back. Why? There's no way the wife will allow a box with 5, 8 or 10 cables wrapped around to the front into the house (or, alternatively, turn the box around and have the power plug staring people in the face). Yes, access to the ports is easier. But, my choice for the wires would be to wrap them all over the top of the box and hope they don't all pull the thing over. Or, route them around the front of the cabinet and over the shelf surface to the front of the box. Aaaaargh! EDIT: Never mind. Looking at the TrendNet TEG series, they have both the power connector and the ports on the front. With that, I can just run the whole thing around and leave the blank back facing the room. Can't see the status lights, but that's not a problem.

[@bobbymoss6160]

I went from a crappy WD MyCloud 1 drive NAS doing at best 15MB/sec transfer rate to Asustor NAS with 2.5Gbe in SMB Multi-channel doing 550MB/sec. Yeah, it was totally worth the investment for me.

[@RadoslawAdamStachnik]

2023 and almost all of Denmark is covered by optical fiber. Almost all of Denmark has 1 Giga from ISP. ISPs are starting to offer 2.5 Giga 😊

[@iharvalianski7843]

How much has changed in just 1 year in this segment… This is incredible…

[@Phil-D83]

I went to 10gbe mikrotik for main pc, media server,etc. Rest is on gigabit.

[@nascompares]

Thanks for sharing dude

[@daveg4417]

I bought a QNAP QSW-1105-5T 5-port 2.5Gbe switch a year ago (Dec 2021). The main reason was for fast file transfer between my workstations, since I work with large files. I have three workstations with 2.5Gbe ports. The only issue that I have ran into is that the switch crashes about once every six months and requires a power cycle. I also just bought an Asustor AS6704T NAS with 2.5Gbe (Jul 2023). 2.5Gbe should be included on everything that is premium motherboards now.

[@bobbymoss6160]

I wish standard mobo would come with dual 2.5Gbe network port, and not just ultra premium workstation type mobos.

[@daveg4417]

@@bobbymoss6160- I agree. Any premium AMD/Intel motherboard with only 1GBe on it now is poor tech design. I had to buy an ASUS 2.5GBe adapter card for my main X99 workstation in order to connect it to the fast switch. At least the adapter cards are inexpensive and plug-and-play.

[@bobbymoss6160]

@@daveg4417 The problem with PCI-E NIC is that it will take over the entire PCI-E lane and disabling the M.2 NvME port, at least on my B550 mobo. I'm using the Netgear MS305 switch.

[@daveg4417]

@@bobbymoss6160- Yes, that is an issue then. I typically buy the high end boards like X-series or Z-series, specifically because they usually have better PCI Lane management. Motherboards like ASUS TUF and ROG. All of my systems also have NVMe boot drives and data drives. It costs more, but I find the extra features worth it. The only features that I don't use are the WiFi and Bluetooth.

[@iharvalianski7843]

We in Canada have 10 Gbe now come standard on ONT.

[@edwardallenthree]

I went with a 2.5 gbe card, even though my switch is 10gbe and server is 10gbe. The reason is convoluted (I have an 40 GB infiniband fabric for storage), but come down to only havjng a single PCI lane left for Ethernet.

[@nascompares]

I should have factored in the subject of people having lower bandwidth PCIe slots available!!!! Thank you for highlighting this factor... ...I now feel like a right tit!

[@mrtechie6810]

@@nascompares Please do, I was wondering about this very issue!

[@jensschroder8214]

A 2.5 GB network card from China with RTL chip costs 15 euros. a 2.5 GB Ethernet switch with 5 or 6 Ports cost 80 € or less

[@DaleEarnhardtsSeatbelt]

I need a managed 2.5G switch with poe for less than like $300 that would be nice. With wifi6 they seem to be becoming more popular

[@InspectorGadget2014]

Truth be told, 2.5GBe was a wee bit late to the market (2015), the fact that both alliances were fighting for the defacto standard did not help matters, I suspect. IMHO, although I could be wrong, 2.5GBe was targeted for folks to have a bit higher performance whilst keeping the same cabling as they used for 1GBe so far (within certain reason. read: CAT5E or better). As 10GBe requires CAT6A cabling, for the average office-space, pulling & replacing the CAT5E cables to support 10Gbe would become very costly. Plus add to that modern-day chipsets can often support more & widely standards depending on the firmware(!), I do think it is not rocket-science that 2.5Gbe (and 5Gbe) have been around. So I personally believe the driver behind the "success" (quotes intentionally) of 2.5Gbe is infrastructure, i.e. the cabling (and active components such as routers & switches), for businesses. For the average consumer, 2.5Gbe is nice to have but I also believe that WIFI 6 is an important driver indeed; With WIFI6 the theoretically reach maximum throughput is 1Gbe, so multi-gigabit speeds (2.5Gbe etc) is then strongly recommended unless your switch where that (WIFI6) AccessPoint is connect to supports multi-link aggregation (to the rest of the network). Yet, if you look around, you can find sometimes astonishing deals on (used) 10Gbe switches, if you are okay with those being loud and generating heat. (recommended: 19 inch rack with ventilators & placed where noise is not an issue) BTW, when you do go for 2.5Gbe/5Gbe, be careful that the prosumer switches often do not have all(!) their ports supporting multi-gigabit speeds. To keep the costs, heat & noise down. (sometimes even being fanless) If you can afford replacing your wiring for CAT6A, patiently hunt for an affordable (used) 10GBe switch and can take care of the heat & noise, I would hands-down go for 10Gbe, that really can provide more performance. Provided your NAS (and other networking-kit) can handle the higher throughputs, thus are using SSD for caching, fair CPU in your computer, etc etc. If you can not replace the wiring, can not stand any heat/noise etc, than 2.5Gbe (and/or 5Gbe might be a viable option. However, if you do calculate costs, I always recommend to calculate the price per port for your new 2.5Gbe switch, compared to (e.g.) an used 10Gbe switch, you might be surprised by the outcome.

[@EverydayHiFiGuy]

How do i utilize a router with only 1 2.5g port? do I plug a 2.5 switch into that port and then connect my modem and other devices to that switch?

[@peterschmidt9942]

There's no chance of any ISP in Australia coming anywhere close to these speeds for home use ATM. Most downloads peak between 5-10MB/s even now. Talk about 3rd world speeds down under LOL

[@robostrikeyou4365]

It's sounding like WiFi 6 might be a competitive, cheaper and easier option as I cant run Ethernet cables to my Qnap TS-473-4G easily. Love to see a video comparing WiFi 6, 2.5 and 10GBE, most consumer nas would never make the most of 10gbe?

[@WR3ND]

USB 3 hits 5Gbps and 3.2 10Gbps. I'm not sure how well router USB NAS servers perform at that level though. You can get 260MBps (2Gbps) on a good HDD these days though, so a RAID 5 could say in theory get you up toward 8Gbps.

[@moktar22]

would love to see a synology 4 port 1gbit device (1521 in my case) would benefit from 5 or 2.5 (link aggregation, usb, hack?? ) thanks.

[@ErraticPT]

From 3x to 2.5x the cost, ooh what a bargain. Its definitely a case of price fixing as the chipsets do not cost much more than 1Gb ones. When will they realise that if they make the cost of switchs/routers more realistic they'll make a damn site more money by shear volume of sales? Instead they would rather make less overall but fleece all but less customers, makes no bloody sense!

[@DavidA20200]

2.5 Gb is actually close to 300 MB/s not 250.

[@nascompares]

True, but you need to completely saturate the connection in a single direction with all clients...and there is always a rouge ping or a client process popping around in the background.

[@psytcp]

@@nascompares 2500/8=312.5MB theoretical. Maths aren't that difficult

[@kimlynch5526]

This is interesting but doesn't address my biggest problem, what I'll call the nervous system. Wiring the house for 10 Gigabit so the connected devices can perform up to their rated speed. I am coming at this being an engineer that has read up a little and found some years ago that some Cat cable didn't perform up to rated spec. So is that a problem today? What are reputable brands to buy from looking for 10 Gigabit? I'm 66 and allergic to insulation in attic so how do I find an installer of 10 gigabit? I found on KZbin Lawrence systems. They look like they know what they are doing but are not in Southern California. I bet other people have this problem. Maybe a good subject to post and can you give me any ideas on how to get this done?

[@laurikvo]

I'm no expert in this but if I were you I would contact some of your nearest installers that are around your area. Just Google something like "Southern California CAT6 installer" and pick some of your favourites or nearest ones to contact. They know their job and can ask the right questions and recommend the best solution to your home. As far as I know CAT6a is enough for 10Gigabit if your cable runs (per cable) are shorter than 180ft (Snazzy Labs KZbin channel did a video on this recenty). Otherwise you might need some form of CAT7 cable.

[@edwardallenthree]

A good low voltage company can help. My neighbor works for one. Low voltage women and men are weird folks, but they are the ones you want running stuff through your walls. Have them do speaker cables too!

[@kimlynch5526]

@@laurikvo I had an installer whose work in the past was so so. I would like someone with history of installing 10 gigabit. I found some that were only commercial and not home installs.

[@carlospiovazquez7431]

thanks for making this videos

[@MrBook123456]

thanks

[@genrabbit9995]

Why are 2.5Gb a thing anyway? By this time we should have been on 10Gb..

[@emilnordgard5228]

Imma buy a router w 2.5 gig

[@emilnordgard5228]

With motherboard that supports it directly

[@BelgianDoomer]

all motherboards released this last year have 2.5GbE, so anyone who built a pc over the last year has this and wants to use it.

[@edwardallenthree]

Someday, 2.5GbE switches will be affordable. Today, it's cheaper to get a mikrotik 4 port gigabit switch and sfp+ Ethernet adapters than a trendnet 8 port with no 10 GbE uplinks.

[@Stone815]

BITS not BYTES!