That's a big ass link.
Discussion
I am still living in the past with 1GB at home. I was going to upgrade to 10GB at some point but now I'll hold out for that sweet 40GB 😂😂😂
Running anything faster than 2.5G on copper is expensive (Cat6a and hardware), often problematic (heat issues) and bad value (just use fiber or something)
10G with fiber is cheap, including hardware, if you know where to buy. Need more throughput for 1-2 things? Use a LAG.
25G also would recommend if you need more throughput, and the hardware isn’t that expensive either.
40G/100G, don’t. The 4x10G/25G lane setup means you either pay for expensive MPO fiber or end up dumping a bunch on modules. NICs for 100G are a pain in the ass.
Also with SFP shit vendors often lock what modules you can use to their own only. And charge markups Apple would wish they could.
Thankfully there’s ways around it.
> ...if you know where to buy...
So... where to buy?
I've been looking into installing 10G in our coworking space. My brother-in-law does videography, and a nice, big NAS with plenty of space and and hard-drive speed LAN would be perfect.
Look on the used market. You can find a bunch of stuff on eBay.
Note: do research before you buy, avoid HP shit at all costs, if you can avoid using switches with module vendor locking, I can try to help with this
For fiber and modules, go to fs.com.
Also for NICs look for used shit too.
Also power usage is a bitch.
Could you give me some more details? How many devices, any potential upgrades planned down the line (more hosts or link aggregation), rough distance for cable runs, etc.
One link between buildings, about 250-300ft (I only want to pay the ISP once 🤷♂️😂), 1G needed but 2.5G preferred for upgradability.
Once in the building, I think we want 10G between the NAS/Server and 4 workstations (maybe up to 6 in the future). Those runs don't need any more than about 50-ft, most probably in the 10-25ft range, depending on placement. The use case is videography, photography, video podcasting, and local website hosting for development. I already do that last one from my laptop, but it'd be nice to host it where it can always run.
Also, while were out and about, we might tunnel into the NAS for footage and photo dumps so we're never walking around with all our data.
Do you intend on running the link between two buildings outdoor or via a conduit? There’s a cost difference.
I also need to know on the 1st building you have a switch with an SFP(+) port or not, otherwise you’ll need a switch. Don’t use media converters. 300ft+ is only going to be good with fiber, copper will cause issues since you’re very close to going over spec.
You're right. It's copper, currently, on a daisy chain (we have a third, small building between). The first 150ft is working great at full gigabit speeds, but the second got downgraded by the hardware to 100Mbps 😡 Same cable, and it ran at gigabit on install. The run is out-of-doors, so I got direct-bury grade copper lines.
I was 🤏 this close to getting a couple media converters just for that 300-ft line about a month ago (copper → MC → 300-ft fiber → MC → copper). The modem is copper-only, and I don't know if the ISP would like it if I swapped it for my own (including that I'm not sure I could get it set up because of vendor locking by the ISP).
Media converters work until they break and you have no diagnostics
Context:
10GBASE-T runs hot as fuck. And it’s more expensive than just using SFP+ and running fiber or something.
I do not want to think how expensive (and hot) 40GBASE-T would be compared to just fiber
Thankfully no one made 40GBASE-T hardware