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leor wrote:

Waco wrote:

leor wrote:

The router assigns the internal IP addresses, no? Doesn't all internal traffic pass through the router at some point? Wouldn't the slowest link in the chain constrict all traffic to that speed?

Only internal traffic that needs to leave your local network is routed through your routers WAN port. Switches can run without any router at all for just local access.

gotcha, so, not like the old SCSI interface

so connect the router to the switch and connect all the devices with fast network connections to the switch only and I'm golden

still would be nice if this tech started making its way into routers, the standard has been out for damn near a year!

The 10 Gb standard has been around woefully long to have not made it into consumer gear at this point...

Waco wrote:

The 10 Gb standard has been around woefully long to have not made it into consumer gear at this point...

Which 10GB standard? 10GBase-T (copper) was created in 2007 IIRC.

Ten years is about normal for a new standard to start filtering down to SOHO.

EDIT: Yeah, 10-gig on Fiber patches dates back to the turn of the century but even weird/proprietary copper connectors were much more recent.

10GBase-T has additional hidden issues.

1. CAT5E is insufficient and even CAT6 UTP is limited to 55m instead of the usual 100m. So suddenly you need either CAT6 STP or CAT6a UTP/STP for your 10Gb runs.
2. The rise of Wi-Fi clearly shows average homeowners have no interest in running cables.
3. Running cables is expensive. Even if you have the skill to do it all yourself it's still expensive in terms of man hours (your time does have a value), not to mention tools. If you're the type of person who has the tools already and are getting ready to post and argue, you're definitely not the average consumer and you're missing the broader point.
4. CAT5E cable is ridiculously common across business and even the cables most users own in their home.
5. It's not just the cable. Keep in mind that the ever increasing synchronous frequency that must be maintained (500MHz) across a CAT6a cable (much less something like CAT8) also puts a great deal of pressure on proper materials and construction/crimping of the cable. Screwing up either will absolutely ruin signal integrity and cause a cable to fail a certification test. Many cheap fabricated cables don't even get this right. Good odds a CAT6A cable you bought from Amazon for cheap will perform little better than a 5E cable due to poor materials. Example

Ryu, while those are all good points, SOHO installs tend to be concentrated, not all over a house.

My 10GBase-T runs are over standard Cat5e. The fact that this works fine is down to the fact that none of my cables are over 3 meters, and most are a lot shorter... because everything is (10GBase, at least) is in the same desk.

Vhalidictes wrote:

Ryu, while those are all good points, SOHO installs tend to be concentrated, not all over a house.

My 10GBase-T runs are over standard Cat5e. The fact that this works fine is down to the fact that none of my cables are over 3 meters, and most are a lot shorter... because everything is (10GBase, at least) is in the same desk.

Depends on the home. While I know some people put a cable modem in a given room and then turn that room into the computer room (and use Wi-Fi for the rest of the home), that's not always the case and I'd even go so far to argue that's more of a geek choice than how normal people distribute computing devices in their home. The demand for better distribution of Wi-Fi signal and the rise of mesh wireless really illustrates that the concentrated computing home isn't really a common thing.

As for your cables, I attribute it more to dumb luck of good materials and construction than the length.

I've seen USB 3.0 cables unable to handle USB 3.1 signaling with lengths under 1m. To be fair USB operates at a much higher frequency, nonetheless, it still illustrates my point that cable quality can easily bite you even when you'd think it wouldn't. It also helps illustrate that length alone isn't a savior from issues.

This forum represents a minority of the population who are ideally suited for tech like 10Gb. We can use the bandwidth. We probably have arranged our homes to already leverage cables in some way. We are ready to deal with the technical problems that might occur. We couldn't be anymore niche if we tried.

Waco wrote:

Why does the router interface matter at all? If you don't have more than 1 Gbps of Internet connectivity, it's literally a non-issue.

It matters when most home networks simply connect to the router making it the de facto switch for the network. I could get a 5G or 10G switch and route the entire network into that for fast NAS throughput, but then the entire home network would be routed through a single Gigabit link that connects the switch to the router making it a potential choke point to/from the internet. Families with kids would probably find ways to saturate it and cause latency spikes.

The alternative is to use the switch to only connect select PCs to the NAS, but then systems using Gigabit links are still going to have long backup times. It isn't a case for my household, but I can already see an issue where if multiple PCs backed up system images at the same time every week then they would immediately saturate the Gigabit link connecting the router to the switch to the NAS. It only takes a single SSD to saturate that link when making a backup. Whichever way you design the network there's going to be choke points at either the internet or at the NAS, so best to just make the home router 5 or 10G capable and forget a switch.

Most home users use a "router" which combines a router, switch and wireless AP all in one, but it's still the "switch" part which handles communication between clients on the local network, no? Unless you're mirroring backups to the cloud it doesn't seem like there's going to be a lot of external traffic involved there. I don't at all consider myself an expert on networks. I'm just trying to understand what role you're thinking the router is playing here.

Kougar wrote:

Waco wrote:

Why does the router interface matter at all? If you don't have more than 1 Gbps of Internet connectivity, it's literally a non-issue.

It matters when most home networks simply connect to the router making it the de facto switch for the network. I could get a 5G or 10G switch and route the entire network into that for fast NAS throughput, but then the entire home network would be routed through a single Gigabit link that connects the switch to the router making it a potential choke point to/from the internet. Families with kids would probably find ways to saturate it and cause latency spikes.

The alternative is to use the switch to only connect select PCs to the NAS, but then systems using Gigabit links are still going to have long backup times. It isn't a case for my household, but I can already see an issue where if multiple PCs backed up system images at the same time every week then they would immediately saturate the Gigabit link connecting the router to the switch to the NAS. It only takes a single SSD to saturate that link when making a backup. Whichever way you design the network there's going to be choke points at either the internet or at the NAS, so best to just make the home router 5 or 10G capable and forget a switch.

I'm not sure you understand local networks properly in this context. Local traffic will very very rarely impede upon access to a WAN port...and 10 Gb switching locally will only make the "lag" case you describe here even *less* likely since the switching capacity is so much greater than the utilized bandwidth...

My post had nothing at all to do with the WAN port

Kougar wrote:

My post had nothing at all to do with the WAN port

Here's where the confusion comes in:

Kougar wrote:

It matters when most home networks simply connect to the router making it the de facto switch for the network

Sure, but most of those router things only have 4 ports, one of which would be used for the uplink to the 10G switch already.

And if you *have* a 10G switch, why wouldn't you be using it? I mean, if you buy a 10G switch and then hang everything off of a 4 (minus 1!) 1G switch inside your router, that means your advice is really "don't buy really expensive things that you don't use because that's a waste of money.

Hence what you are saying doesn't make a lot of sense. Sure, I could take a $1,000 dollars and then light it on fire too, but I wouldn't. Just like someone could buy a 10G switch and only use two ports on it, one for their NAS and the other as 10 megabit uplink to the rest of their network.

Kougar wrote:

so best to just make the home router 5 or 10G capable and forget a switch.

What? No. Years and years ago I the router I got from free from whomever was only 100 megabit. I shrugged, and plugged it into my 8 port gigabit switch which everything else used. Literal non-problem.

That is a direct equivalence.

That's what Waco is getting at, what you are saying is based on some sort of bizarre misconception or inane misconfiguration. It's so off-the-wall that we're not even clear on what you think you are getting at, other than how it's wrong.

My understanding is that he's talking about using the 4-port switch part of a SOHO router as the network hub and therefore getting bottlenecked at 1Gbit.

Of course there's a lot of reasons why that would never happen, starting with the fact that I'm not sure 10Gig switch/routers are even available, and if they were you don't want to be stuck with only 3-4 free ports.

Okay... yeah I think I agree with you Glorious now that I'm reading my post again. I appreciate the respectable honest replies. Sorry guys, bad example and bad post on my part. Lets see if I can do better:

A home owner buys the 10G switch, everyone pipes directly into it including the NAS. Problem is, the switch is forced to use a single Gigabit link to the router. Lets presume every single person was connected via hardline to the switch and NOBODY plugged directly into the router... problem is only the router has the home WiFi. It would only take a single wifi user copying a 30GB movie from or making an 80GB laptop drive backup to the NAS to saturate that gigabit link between the router and switch. That in turn would disrupt the internet access for everyone in the home network.

Sure that could be fixed by disabling wifi on the router, and the home owner can buy a Wifi device to attach to the switch. But at this point the person is buying an expensive switch and also additional wireless devices. It's just not economical or efficient over getting a single device that combines everything into one.

I understand it's probably wishful thinking to expect a single, efficient 10G router at reasonable price anytime soon, but I still hate the idea of buying a slew of devices when just one would do.

Kougar, you're right, they'd need an AP. But speed is never economical, so...

Vhalidictes wrote:

Kougar, you're right, they'd need an AP. But speed is never economical, so...

Aye, this thread has made that very clear to me! But would a 10G switch and AP access points really be much more than a 10G router? I am still hoping ASUS will make one in a year or two. ASUS already makes both 10G NICs and switches, so it's the logical next step.

Case in point ASRock is still making 10G mainboards. Not only that, but the ASRock x299 motherboard with 10G is $379.99, which if we go by typical X299 pricing is rather "cheap"

Kougar wrote:

problem is only the router has the home WiFi

Well I certainly didn't think about that point, as I have dedicated AP and disabled the built-in AP.

We are indeed getting to the point where that could potentially drive saturation issues. When I re-upped my FIOS connection a few months ago, the price tier that previously provided me 50/50 now provided 150/150. They even advertise gigabit home speed now in my area, though I have no idea if I am eligible. I definitely could go to 300/300 on the next highest tier.

If any of these new routers come with 802.11ac we are well within the realm.

Kougar wrote:

But would a 10G switch and AP access points really be much more than a 10G router? I am still hoping ASUS will make one in a year or two. ASUS already makes both 10G NICs and switches, so it's the logical next step.

Those router builtins always seem to lag though, so I'd have to assume inroads for consumer 10G switches would occur first, probably by many years.

Other than that, yeah, for most people that would probably be best.

Kougar wrote:

A home owner buys the 10G switch, everyone pipes directly into it including the NAS. Problem is, the switch is forced to use a single Gigabit link to the router. Lets presume every single person was connected via hardline to the switch and NOBODY plugged directly into the router... problem is only the router has the home WiFi. It would only take a single wifi user copying a 30GB movie from or making an 80GB laptop drive backup to the NAS to saturate that gigabit link between the router and switch. That in turn would disrupt the internet access for everyone in the home network.

Ah, now I understand what you meant.

Assuming you could drive your wifi at 1 Gbps (which many many many can't) you could generally use QoS to solve this pretty handily. I just don't see the need for gigabit+ access to the router when 99.9% of the use cases won't ever come close to exceeding it. If simultaneous gigabit wifi and WAN access is desired, there are many ways to avoid your proposed scenario.

You don't have to worry about current gen WiFI saturating a 1 GigE link so it's pretty moot anyways.

The easy solution of course would be a dedicated AP also hanging off the 10 Gig switch. Which could easily be just another consumer router (or something like an Unifi AP).

I can understand someone wanting faster LAN speeds enough that they are willing to fork over the $$$ for a 10Gbit switch.
What I don't understand is: Why would that same performance-concerned person decide to back up a laptop over WiFi, rather than just plugging the laptop directly into the 10Gbit switch? Assuming the laptop only has a 1Gbit ethernet port, it's STILL going to be loads faster than backing it up over WiFi.

...Unless you live in the woods and have no WiFi interference around you AND nobody else on your own network is going to want to use the WiFi at the same time AND you have a WiFi card in the laptop that can saturate a 1Gbit connection AND your WiFi access point can also sustain > 1Gbit speeds. In which case:

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

The easy solution of course would be a dedicated AP also hanging off the 10 Gig switch.

My laptop doesn't have an ethernet port at all. I'd have to get a USB dongle to get a physical connection. In my opinion that's just as annoying as having to use wifi for large transfers.

Well plugging laptops into the switch is great (though at that point why have wifi at all, which admittedly was my mentality until I got a smartphone), but given most of these only have four ports there may not be an open port left to do so if it's serving a full household and various devices.

Redocbew wrote:

My laptop doesn't have an ethernet port at all. I'd have to get a USB dongle to get a physical connection. In my opinion that's just as annoying as having to use wifi for large transfers.

I got lucky my father's old laptop has one. He doesn't understand how to set up Wifi security and doesn't even understand how to use the computer well enough to allow me to talk him through the steps over the phone. Was able to get around that by having him plug his laptop directly into the router the cable tech set up.

I don't think we'll see those for awhile. Most people who are interested in 10Gb aren't running consumer routers. I'd wager that many are doing separate AP's and maybe even a wired-only router like the Ubiquity Edgerouter+Unify AP combo.