Fast networking is cheaper than you think.

#10gb #homelab #networking

Things I used in the video:

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Music (in order):
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Gear I Use: (affiliate links)

Recording Gear

Servers and Networking
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Timestamps:
0:00 Another terrible intro
0:10 Nexode RG Charger from UGreen (Sponsor)
1:45 Adding 10Gb to my Home Lab on a budget
2:20 10Gb Switches
4:16 10Gb NICs
5:23 Cable
6:19 Setting up switches
7:12 Testing NICs
12:10 Testing it out on my NAS
12:43 Things got HOT
18:16 Final tests
20:56 10Gb is actually somewhat affordable

[TalpaDK]

Actually being limited by the drives is kind of nice, it just means that it is more or less just as good as having the drives installed locally, but with the added benefit of the drives being available to multiple computers.

[AndysAlias]

The NICs are coming down in price but the Switches still seem pricey, also 10g RJ45 stuff runs HOT! I don't need 10g so obviously I went out and spent 400 quid on upgrades...

[denverag]

FYI it took us ~5 years to go from 10/100 to cheap gigabit in the home
But we've been stuck on gigabit in the home for almost 20 years, when businesses moved to 40G over a decade ago, and are already on 400G
To me, we should have cheap 10-28G as ubiquitous at this point.
The fact that gigabit has stayed around the same price for so long is criminal to me.

[FarmerRiddick]

January 2025 viewing: This video was actually helpful in developing my plans of extending wired connections over my 40 acre farm, for things like cameras and for the produce stand, drip irrigation controls for the crops, and so on.
I've been learning that I'll have to apparently use fiber wire with possibly 10GB cards to run things back up to the house.
The funny thing is, that the best internet I can get, is through Starlink, which is a very long way off from ever seeing 1GB. However, is SO much better than the dial up speeds of DSL from Century Link, which I was so happy to finally fire about a year ago!
As a somewhat geek, I really enjoy your channel!

[gustersongusterson]

Wake me up when we have affordable 2.5g / 10g managed switches.

[marklewus]

Great work as always. I purchased a QSW-2104-2T-A to upgrade from 1G to 2.5/10. I installed new wire for the single 10G run from NAS / switch rack to my main PC. But I have had success with 2.5G over my existing old timey unshielded cat 5 (no bloody e!) cable that I installed in the late 90s. Runs are only 20-40m but it all works.

[ZoidTechnology]

10GBASE-T NICs get HOT! If you're strapping a fan to the card, it's a good idea to disable temperature control for the fan header and set a constant speed. As the fan controller can't see the card's temperature, it can set the fan speed too low to cool it properly. I had this problem with an X540 and designed a PCIe card fan mount with an inbuilt controller. I could send you one if you'd like?

[fiveangle]

I've been running 4Gbit (4x 1Gbit trunked) on my server and workstation for about a decade using all ex-enterprise gear that I got for pennies and/or free, but these little switches are actually getting so reasonable and low powered that it seems finally the time to move to a simpler hw configuration :) Thanks for the review and detailing your experiences.

[virtualjoedub]

If you loose a screw in carpet, take a sock, slide it over the end of your vacuum cleaner, and use it as a strainer as you go over the area. saved my butt a few times. lol

[TwistedMe]

16:30 You may wish to get a slot mounted Squirrel cage blower fan. It would take up a single slot and wouldn't be as obnoxious to remount if you wanted to repaste the NIC's heatsink(s). Amazon currently has a deal on a Startech brand for less than $9.

[ahmetrefikeryilmaz]

The inspur is not a dud, I have one too. It worked on your nas because you gave it all the 8 lanes it asked for unlike the 4 lanes you gave it on your desktop. There should be three jumpers on it. Two of them should be adjacent to the ports. Start from left and short pins 1 and 2 on the first jumper, then do 2 and 3 on the second. This way you will have disabled one of the ports and it will happily accept to work on pci-e 2.0 x4.

[BrianThomas]

15:08 haha. I can already hear the conversation now. "Honey do you smell something burning? It smells like burnt plastic."

[andrewb]

Try using parallel streams with iperf. Something like adding "-P 4" switch to your command might fix that. That will run 4 transfers in parallel, and each will settle at 2.2-2.4 Gbps each, getting you to ~9.6 total. That ancient BCM card might hold that back a little, but jumbo packets could help there, too.

[Blewis-Diarrheo]

I think I've identified what I like most about this channel. It's that it doesn't come from a place of expertise - it comes from a place of "let's see what happens and figure it out" and I think that is inspiring for all of us who are just trying to experiment and enjoy ourselves

[Elemino]

Just something to remember: The file transfer protocol in Windows over the network is single threaded. At some point, you won't be able to go any faster unless you have a faster CPU.

[mcpn]

upgrading networking for local file transfer is like buying a new monitor for gaming
it's almost guaranteed you will want to upgrade your GPU afterwards to keep up with your better resolution

[thecoffeez]

Nice to see you finally out of the dark ages of networking :D Just kidding! My home lab still has a 10/100 switch in it, and I am still running 10/100/1000 NICs, but now you've made me wanna get off my butt and actually installing the upgraded hardware I have!

[romanrm]

Enable jumbo frames in all the adapter settings (9000 byte MTU), should improve the 7 Gbit iperf.

Aside from that, unless video editing directly from a flash-storage NAS, I found that 2.5 Gbit is really enough. And those switches are cheaper, and cards are cooler, less power-consuming and often even integrated onboard in mobos nowadays.

[rogerlevasseur]

Been giving thoughts to updating the home network to go from Gigabit to 2.5G, and here's something to make me think about faster equipment.

[DBTechYT]

Did you enable jumbo packets/frames on your Windows machine to enable a larger Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size for data being sent over a network?