Cost effective 10G home network upgrade

[plissken]

Started setting up a cost effective 10G Fiber SR network.

 

My file server is a Dell Power Edge R620 and upgraded to a Broadcom 2 GBE / 2 SFP+ card for $20. BTW the R620's are quite affordable (often $200 to start) on eBay. Add drives of your choice up to 8 drive bays.

Cisco WS-2930 48 port 10/100/1000 copper and 4 SFP+ $65

HP NC522SFP Dual PCI-E X 8 $25

 

SFP and cabling (all other MM OM3 LC<>LC I already have) $100

 

So for $210 you can get 10G fiber for a single end point and a server.

 

 

 

[lucretius]

32 minutes ago, plissken said:

So for $210 you can get 10G fiber for a single end point and a server.

 

Just waiting for a 10G internet connection.  [My current connection is 1.5G, however, the ISP supplied modem/router does not have any SFP ports.]

[plissken]

12 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

Just waiting for a 10G internet connection.  [My current connection is 1.5G, however, the ISP supplied modem/router does not have any SFP ports.]

 

Unfortunately in the States there is no real competition for internet speeds. And what we do have is expensive compared.

[AudioDoctor]

I have been thinking about doing this lately. I fear it will be an incredible job in this old house though...

[plissken]

21 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

I have been thinking about doing this lately. I fear it will be an incredible job in this old house though...

 

I picked up a bunch of kit when I moved into my 65 year old house. Including a 2 foot drill bit and hammer drill 🙂 It got done.

[AudioDoctor]

1 minute ago, plissken said:

 

I picked up a bunch of kit when I moved into my 65 year old house. Including a 2 foot drill bit and hammer drill 🙂 It got done.

 

 

I wish my house was only 65 years old...

[lucretius]

1 hour ago, plissken said:

 

Unfortunately in the States there is no real competition for internet speeds. And what we do have is expensive compared.

 

It's even more expensive in Canada!  Canadians pay some of the highest prices in the industrialized world for home internet and mobile phone data plans,

[Jud]

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

I have been thinking about doing this lately. I fear it will be an incredible job in this old house though...

 

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

I wish my house was only 65 years old...

 

Lived in a restored schoolhouse built in 1869, so I have some notion.

 

Wi-Fi 6 is available (standalone and mesh routers), and more Wi-Fi 6-capable equipment will likely be available in the next couple of months (for example, gateways from Comcast/Xfinity and Netgear). That would give you anything up to 2.5Gbps Wi-Fi depending on the speed provided by your ISP and various other factors. So that's another option if you don't want to run fiber.

[plissken]

51 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

 

Lived in a restored schoolhouse built in 1869, so I have some notion.

 

Wi-Fi 6 is available (standalone and mesh routers), and more Wi-Fi 6-capable equipment will likely be available in the next couple of months (for example, gateways from Comcast/Xfinity and Netgear). That would give you anything up to 2.5Gbps Wi-Fi depending on the speed provided by your ISP and various other factors. So that's another option if you don't want to run fiber.

 

Wifi 6 should initially be good to 10Gbps and I think 14Gbps later on.

[Ralf11]

I ran CAT-6 when I had the downstairs ceilings ... ah down, but never hooked it up.  WiFi solves a lot of problems.

[lucretius]

3 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

 

I wish my house was only 65 years old...

 

My house is about 100 years old.  I have cable coming in from the outside in various places around the house as well as twisted par in a couple of places.  I used one of the twisted pair lines to fish the fiber into my computer room.  I kept the various cable runs in place so that one day I could use it to fish some more fiber into the house.

[AudioDoctor]

2 hours ago, Jud said:

 

 

Lived in a restored schoolhouse built in 1869, so I have some notion.

 

Wi-Fi 6 is available (standalone and mesh routers), and more Wi-Fi 6-capable equipment will likely be available in the next couple of months (for example, gateways from Comcast/Xfinity and Netgear). That would give you anything up to 2.5Gbps Wi-Fi depending on the speed provided by your ISP and various other factors. So that's another option if you don't want to run fiber.

 

I have been looking at the new Orbi mesh routers with WiFi 6 as well, right now a pair of them is 700 buckaroos.

[AudioDoctor]

41 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

My house is about 100 years old.  I have cable coming in from the outside in various places around the house as well as twisted par in a couple of places.  I used one of the twisted pair lines to fish the fiber into my computer room.  I kept the various cable runs in place so that one day I could use it to fish some more fiber into the house.

 

If we stay in this place, we will do that eventually.

[Ralf11]

eventually, termites will clear the way for you...

[Jud]

3 hours ago, plissken said:

 

Wifi 6 should initially be good to 10Gbps and I think 14Gbps later on.

 

Right, but the lower number is what both gateways show as capability right now. And since Xfinity's highest speed at the moment is 1Gbps, and the house is "wired" with two fiber runs good to 40Gbps if I want something faster in the future, I think I'll be happy there for now.

[AudioDoctor]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

eventually, termites will clear the way for you...

 

I appreciate your undying positivity!

[Foggie]

8 hours ago, plissken said:

Cisco WS-2930 48 port 10/100/1000 copper and 4 SFP+ $65

Based on the title 10GB, isn’t this switch only 1GB capable?  I’ve been contemplating updating my managed switch and internal wkst with10GBe fiber 

[plissken]

13 minutes ago, Foggie said:

Based on the title 10GB, isn’t this switch only 1GB capable?  I’ve been contemplating updating my managed switch and internal wkst with10GBe fiber 

 

SFP+ is 10GBe

[Foggie]

13 hours ago, plissken said:

 

SFP+ is 10GBe

Hmm, didn't  know about "+" . 

[plissken]

Cards are installed. The HP 523 is plug and play with Windows 10, the 522 takes some work. So get the 523 🙂

 

The Dell Broadcom based card came right up!

 

Insane for $29 and $20 for the cards and $23 and $18 for the SFP+ SR modules for them.

[jabbr]

Yes the Dell 620 is a terrific option (I got once / similar based on your advice) cheap enough that I’ve used it as a prototype/testbed server. I upgraded to a Mellanox 100Gbe QSFP28 NIC which is overkill/pointless for audio! For the ultimate in HQPlayer upsampling then clock speed is important. 
 

10Gbe is indeed dirt cheap and great quality and you’ve redemonstrated that it’s pretty much plug and play with diverse types of equipment. 

[plissken]

18 minutes ago, jabbr said:

I upgraded to a Mellanox 100Gbe QSFP28 NIC which is overkill/pointless for audio! 

 

So pointless but yet so awesome. I just did a core upgrade for a Utility and we are only doing dual 40GBe ISL.

[plissken]

Here is the iPerf results and sure that my N3150 playback machine is the bottleneck:

 

Connecting to host fs-ll-1, port 5201
[  4] local fe80::9c9f:b5ef:606:bb5e port 55844 connected to fe80::1fd:9bd:dc5c:f2f port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec   306 MBytes  2.56 Gbits/sec
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec   292 MBytes  2.45 Gbits/sec
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec   306 MBytes  2.56 Gbits/sec
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec   307 MBytes  2.57 Gbits/sec
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec   303 MBytes  2.54 Gbits/sec
[  4]   5.00-6.00   sec   304 MBytes  2.55 Gbits/sec
[  4]   6.00-7.00   sec   303 MBytes  2.54 Gbits/sec
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec   301 MBytes  2.52 Gbits/sec
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec   304 MBytes  2.55 Gbits/sec
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec   306 MBytes  2.56 Gbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  2.96 GBytes  2.54 Gbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  2.96 GBytes  2.54 Gbits/sec                  receiver

 

After all is said and done with the change up to the HP 523 vs the 522: $214 and that includes tax and shipping.

 

[plissken]

I'll setup jumbo frame next and rerun and see what happens on the N3150 based system.

[plissken]

Here is a quick (1 minute) video showing CPU Utilization on the N3150 music system and the Xeon 2650 server during iPerf.

 

Each iPerf run is 10 seconds. At 332MB/s I can cache up an entire CD album in ~2 seconds and the connection will go idle afterwards as the video shows.