Is now the time to go to 5 Gbps or 10 Gbps home networking?

[ng4ever]

Has it been for a while ?

If so what do I need ?

Most important question is cat 5e cable fast enough for up to 10 Gbps or only 2 Gbps to 5 Gbps ?

 

[bbunge]

Before you invest in higher bandwidth LAN ask yourself if you really need it and do you want to spend big bucks? CAT5e properly installed might do 2.5 Gbps. But is it properly installed and tested?

You likely do not utilize a 1 Gbps LAN connection fully. So, save your money...

 

[TheLostSwede]

Has it been for a while ?

Depends on what you're willing to pay really, but 10 Gbps is nowhere close to 2.5 Gbps costs and as far as 5 Gbps goes, it will only start taking off this year, courtesy of the cheaper 5 Gbps Ethernet ICs from Realtek.

If so what do I need ?

That depends on your needs, but there are next to no 5 Gbps switches. Plenty of 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps options out there.

Most important question is cat 5e cable fast enough for up to 10 Gbps or only 2 Gbps to 5 Gbps ?

Cat 5e is good enugh for 2.5 and 5 Gbps, but not 10 Gbps. You need Cat 6 for runs of up to 50 meters, Cat 6A for up to 100 meters.

I've been running 10 Gbps between my PC and NAS for over five years, but finally invested in a five port 10 Gbps switch and will be able to have more 10 Gbps devices once we move into our new place.

 

[ddaenen1]

Honestly, i wouldn't know why i would need that right now. As long i cannot get 10 Gbps on the WAN side, i don't see the point. My ISPs highest offering is 1000/50 which is more that i need to for my purposes, even if i have Nextcloud running that i use for my business. Even with 3/4 devices streaming at 4K, there is no bottleneck. My router is 10 Gbps ready but none of my other equipment is and i looked at 10 Gbps switches and the price doesn't justify the gain right now.

 

[RMerlin]

2.5 Gbps is the current sweet spot. Almost everything significative (except some dinosaurs like Synology...) supports 2.5 Gbps out of the box now.

Don't stare at the 10 Gbps mirage - going from 1 Gbps to 2.5 Gbps is currently affordable, and still more than doubles the throughput between your PC and your NAS, reaching the throughput limit of a regular HDD. 10 Gbps is very expensive, and would be faster than the drives in a regular NAS could support anyway. Unless you're rich enough to get NICs, switches, and high capacity SSDs for the NAS to be able to keep up.

An 8 x 2.5 Gbps network switch can be had for around $100 these days. I completed the upgrade of my own LAN to 2.5 Gbps last autumn once these switches became affordable, and stopped dropping in price every two weeks. I even got one for $150 CAD that offered PoE, so I could power my office IP Phone with it. My desktop disk imaging are now able to move at over 200 MB/s to my NAS.

 

[Tech9]

I don't see why I need to look what someone else is running to decide what I need. Obviously the needs, goals and budgets are all different. I do have 10GbE links on my business networks and only where needed. What is 10GbE good for an access point or accounting PC, for example? My home network is Gigabit and does everything I need to do at home. No plans to update it any time soon. Got some new AX-class access points recently and that's it.

 

[sfx2000]

As others mention - 2.5Gbe is the sweet spot, and price per port is coming down quickly...

That being said - gigabit ethernet is essentially free these days, and for most, it's "good enough"...

 

[TheLostSwede]

Honestly, i wouldn't know why i would need that right now. As long i cannot get 10 Gbps on the WAN side, i don't see the point. My ISPs highest offering is 1000/50 which is more that i need to for my purposes, even if i have Nextcloud running that i use for my business. Even with 3/4 devices streaming at 4K, there is no bottleneck. My router is 10 Gbps ready but none of my other equipment is and i looked at 10 Gbps switches and the price doesn't justify the gain right now.

You clearly don't back up your PC or copy any larger amounts of data over your network, so in that case, maybe it's not what you need, but for many of us, 10 Gpbs has been a game changer. I used to edit a bit of video and being able to use my NAS to dump all that content on, instead of having it taking up space on my SSD was a game changer using 10 Gbps, as it ended up being like having a local drive. It meant I didn't have to copy the files back and forth and having to wait 10-15 minutes to do so. Your use case is not everyone elses use case.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Don't stare at the 10 Gbps mirage - going from 1 Gbps to 2.5 Gbps is currently affordable, and still more than doubles the throughput between your PC and your NAS, reaching the throughput limit of a regular HDD. 10 Gbps is very expensive, and would be faster than the drives in a regular NAS could support anyway. Unless you're rich enough to get NICs, switches, and high capacity SSDs for the NAS to be able to keep up.

Sorry, but I don't agree at all with you here. With the right RAID setup you can easily get spinning rust to perform well enough to justify 10 Gbps if you have a four drive NAS or bigger. I built a DIY NAS with 10 Gbps Ethernet over five years ago and sequential data transfers can be just as fast as from a SATA SSD.
Also, the four Aquantia 10 Gbps NICs I have, I've paid less than $60 for. Yes, all bought during sales, but it doesn't have to cost insane money.
Not disagreeing with the rest of your thoughts here though.

 

[glens]

... you can easily get spinning rust to perform well enough ...

Love that phraseology...

 

[coxhaus]

If you do much work local then 10 gig backbone will help you. It is probably more small business cases but not always.
When you add a lot of drives RAID gets very fast. You are still limited by the controller speed.

 

[glens]

I know that upgrading my backbone from 1Gb to 2.5 was highly welcome, even having "just" 500Mb symmetrical outside feed.