Finally "Cheap" 2.5GbE Unmanaged Switches From TRENDnet
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- čas přidán 2. 04. 2021
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One of the big challenges we see in the market is that as 2.5GbE network ports become more pervasive, there are not as many 2.5GbE switch options available. TRENDnet is now offering 5-port and 8-port unmanaged switches called the TRENDnet TEG-S350 and TEG-S380 aim to bring low-cost 2.5GbE network switches to market. Still, are they cheap enough to compete with 1GbE? We are looking for your feedback.
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When you can get a whole 8 port gigabit switch for less than the cost of a single 2.5g port, you know something's wrong
There are cheaper options. QNAP makes a 5-port 2.5Gbe switch (the QSW-1105-5T) that has an MSRP of $100 USD (though real-world prices are more like $110).
That’s cheap enough. Back when, I was paying $2,000 for what was a 10mbe with seven of those ports with one 100mbe port. People complain too much.
@@guspaz It's cheaper, but still pricey. Street price for that in the UK is £110 (£22/port, about right for USD -> GBP + VAT); meanwhile I can get a TP-LINK LS108G for £16.
@@melgross I jumped into the GbE @ home world early on when 8 port switches needed a full U with active cooling and finally snuck under $1000. Just a few years later, they were half the size, 1/4 the power consumption, passive and $100. Now they're plastic and $25.
10GbT has stubbornly held its per-port price for damn near the last decade that I've been watching - over that same period 1g dropped 95%. Introducing 5g and 2.5g at "most-of" and "a-big-slab-of" the 10g port pricing doesn't make an especially convincing argument for.
@@mattd5136 while it may be hard to believe, Apple was credited for bringing the cost of both 100Mb and 1Gb down when they put ports into all of their machines. A year after they did that, cards dropped from about $750 to $100, and a year later, to below $50.
But Apple didn’t do that with either 2.5 or 10. They put 10 on their highest end, but lowest selling machines.
What’s needed is for a major computer manufacturer to make this standard. But no one has been interested. Unless this reaches major sales. Prices will just come down very slowly.
We need more competition or just go for 10 Gigabit and be done with it :)
Totally agree. I don't see the point for 2.5 and 5 Gig, if you still have to change your equipment
exactly
@@coso2 right, 2.5/5gb isn’t going to get me through 10 years (how I see the life of a switch). At this price point, if I need to buy something mid-way I might as well just go to 10Gb now.
Due to prices of 2.5GbE I've went with 10GbE hardware capable to work at 2.5GbE if required
@@coso2 99% of consumers barely use 1GB from there devices so internal networks for most home users or SOHO still don't need 2.5/5Gbps yet, but, companies need to make money so they will sell this as a stop gap and rake in the profits.
would be nice if these switches had a 10gbe uplink.
I totally agree with this. I strongly prefer switches with faster uplinks.
Let's hope Mikrotik does something for this market soon
@@tommihommi1 A competitively priced Mikrotik switch with 8-24 copper 10GB ports (with 1/2.5/5 fallback), and two (Q)SPF+/28 25GB, 40GB or 100GB uplinks would be an instant buy from me. I don't even need POE.
@@kwinzman Why do you expect 2,5/5g fallback and 100gb from mikrotik so soon?
@@wiziek I do not. But I can articulate my preference and disappointment with the status quo.
I'd love if motherboards, desktops, and other devices would start standardizing on 2.5 GbE as the baseline (whereas 1 GbE is now), but still, these switches are 4-5x more expensive than 1G units. Until that changes I'd still rather stick with hybrid gear like QNAP's 10/2.5 Gbps switch, so it's more future-proof for when I have more 10G-capable devices.
2.5 Gbps is very appealing for me since I already have 8 rooms in my house wired with Cat5e, and pulling/rewiring to Cat6a or Cat7 is going to be annoying.
It is like 7-9x more expensive than 1GbE which to me is the challenge.
Have you tested the existing cat5e runs with 10 GbE? If they aren't tens of meters long, it would likely work well. But of course it might be unreliable if the signal is stretched to its limits. You will definitely need cat6 to run the full 100 meters of 10 GbE. But at short distances anything that resembles an ethernet cable likely works just fine.
I agree with Jeff Geerling that the QNAP QSW-M2108-2C is the more attractive solution to me -- which is odd because just yesterday I was shopping for one on Amazon and reading a review about it there from a Jeff Geerling (and a week before that I was on Leanpub downloading Ansible books from a Jeff Geerling).
Anyway, I'd say 10 GbE uplinks on a 2.5 GbE switch are pretty critical here, as switches like the Mikrotik CRS309-1G-8S+IN make it pretty easy to have a (silent) home 10 GbE core nowadays, and a 10/2.5 GbE switch is a nice extension to that for the growing number of 2.5 GbE equipped gear.
I'm not sure if a standalone 2.5 GbE network has much of a value proposition to me, especially not at the price discrepancy you note. The question is: what are you connecting to at that speed? A 2.5 Gbps Internet uplink (I wish!), a local server file share (more probably), etc.?
I'd say that these days, working off a network file share at 1 GbE is just unworkable, and probably 2.5 GbE isn't enough of a step up. Local direct attached storage nowadays is commonly PCIe 3.0 NVMe, and increasingly PCIe 4.0 NVMe, so working over 1 GbE/2.5 GbE (essentially mechanical SATA drive speeds) just feels like your computer is freezing/broken. Compared to NVMe, even 10 GbE seem insufficient, clocking in at RAID 0 SATA 3 SSD speeds.
Really, we're approaching the point where 25 GbE is the lowest bar to keep the network competitive with local storage. What's more, 30m runs of OM4 fiber optics can be had for like $50 bucks. The justification for settling for slow copper network speed is getting slim. I'd sooner pay more for more PCIe lanes on a workstation (to have space to add 25 GbE+, RDMA capable NICs) and a silent home 25 GbE (even just 8 port) switch.
Does the QNAP QSW-M2108-2C support 2.5gb on the SFP+ ports?
@@ServeTheHomeVideo didn´t you see the 4x Intel lan cards from QNap that cost "near to nothing" .. make your own switch : QXG-2G4T-I225 (80€ here in germany)
Honestly, as a home user, I think 10USD per port will be my switching point. Currently, the only situation that saturates the current 1Gbps connection is bulk file transfers, which does not happen very often. I think what I care more about is consistent processing latency and stability.
You get a like for showing the internals!
That is what we do!
I mean, if you absolutely need the cable lengh of RJ45, these switches maybe make sense, but the 4x speed increase of the MikroTik 10Gbit switch with SFP+ ports(at the same price but with only four 10Gbit and one 1Gbit port) seem to make much more sense, if you can satisfy the bandwidth of course
$22 per port and they can't put the leds in the RJ-45 ports. The LED placement is an important issue. I totally agree with you on pricing. My guess is that we are just a year or two early for low prices. Thanks for the great videos.
i got the 5 port QNAp 2.5 switch was about 120 bucks and has leds on ports like normal
I thought the LED placement was nit-picking until I saw the price. These switches aren't going to age well as far as appearance. In one or two years they're going to look like the $25 bottom-of-the barrel switches we see today.
I think you're right at the $10-12/port price point.
Agree that the per-port cost for 2.5g is quite a jump from 1g. It's high enough that I just went with 1g or forked out for 10g for the stuff that benefited from it for personal use. This would be perfect with an SPF+ port or 10g for uplink but without the £400 tag of the TEG-30102WS. Prices and product choice is slowly getting better but there's still some way to go yet.
At it's current pricing, per port cost is way too expensive for regular consumers who just want to plug and play. I agree with you on the recommended pricing.
Mikrotik can make a 4x10GbE switch for U$S149, an 8x10GbE for U$S269 and the one that I bought the 16 port 10GbE with redundant power supplies for U$S399. And TRENDnet expects U$S180 for an unmanaged 8x2.5Gbe switch? I know, different customer base, but my point is... how big is the margin TRENDnet gets on these things? IMHO motherboard vendors were never interested in expending a single cent more than necessary because of the low margins they manage (not long ago having an Intel 1GbE instead of a Realtek based solution was the "high end" solution on expensive motherboards), and the lack on interest on the average customer never pushed them to do anything else. There are LOTS of marketing and money invested on WiFi technology, which before WiFi6 it was really "meh" technical wise, but the average customer wanted that... no cables, big numbers. It's a pity, really, the enthusiast has no choice but used enterprise NICs and this switch will be a market flop. It targets a market that... doesn't exists. An unmanaged 4/5 2.5GbE switch should be U$S50, and should be the norm. I updated my home network to 1Gbps... maybe 15 years ago. Sorry for the rant. It's a shame we are not using 10GbE as a cheap standard and replacement for 1GbE like 1GbE was to Fast Ethernet.
"We did a rocket-lake review that nobody watched"
*opens the rocket lake review and watches it, that's how I roll
Thanks!
Glad they are finally here, however I feel like the benefit of going from 1gbe to 2.5g is too costly for enthusiasts in most cases. Meaning it makes more sense to go 10gig if going out and buying bespoke hardware. 2.5g needs to replace 1gbe as the default, with 10gig still the enthusiasts option I feel
I questioned that myself. I mean, we went from 10Mb Ethernet to 100Mb, and then from 100Mb to 1Gb, and then from 1Gb to 10Gb. Every jump was a 10x increase. But going from 1Gb to 2.5Gb... I doubt in most cases you could even tell the different. Like going from 100Mb to 200Mb. Not worth buying new equipment.
@@eosjoe565 What I don't understand is why 2.5GB pops up on all the new Intel motherboards? I mean you can buy USB 5GB NICs that are faster! Feels like penny pinching to me.
@@kwinzman You need to be careful with these 5GB USB NICs. A lot of them actually are not faster than 2.5GB. Seems to be a weird rip-off, but you should do your research before purchasing.
@@fbnx4219 I know that the qna-uc5g1t for example which links at 5GBE can only do 3.5Gbit/s because it's limited by the 5Gbit/s USB3.0.
But it acts as as a dirt cheap upgrade at 80 bucks, usable in pretty much any machine manufactured in the last few years, without even opening it. There is no risk of blue screening the computer when suddenly unplugging like with some Thunderbolt 3 NICs.
I suspect this problem will go away entirely with USB4. And then 2.5GBE on the motherboard will look even more outdated and peny-pinching cheap than it does already.
Enthusiasts got second hand fiber optical 10GbE gear years ago and don't have to care about this. I know I did.
Let these switch manufacturers milk the early adopters of this new market for all I care.
This is great, although I wish it came with a one or two 10gbe ports.. It is still an "affordable" switch for what it offers. Its nice to see someone taking the time to review network gear -- This is exactly why I come to this channel -- Thank you, Patrick! :)
I think the idea here is that if you've got that much traffic to pump a10G port, you'd have the coin to upgrade to a more powerful switch overall
$100 for 8 ports would be ideal (~$13/port), but $120 is probably the most I'd go. Let's be real, these will mostly be used as edge switches, not backbone switches. Since most residential internet connections in the US won't see even gigabit speeds for a significant period of time, and a gigabit switch with 10Gig uplink can be had for the current asking price of the 8 port unit ($189), I think they make very little sense at the current price point for home users like myself.
Unrelated; as much as I like to geek out about crazy high end equipment I can never own/have no use for, this kind of content (consumer/prosumer networking gear like unmanaged switches) is what I really need. Keep up the great work!
Still blows my mind that 15yrs ago I bought a netgear 8 port 1Gbps unmanaged switch for $75. Really wish I knew what the hold up is getting faster networking down to affordable prices. 2006 me was convinced by at least 2015 10GbE would be in the home. I was wrong.
I think the big change is going to be when the home routers have 4x 2.5gig or 5gig ports on the back.
Love the video. I really am holding out for 10Gb with support for 5/2.5Gb instead. I want to have the higher speed uplink to the rest of my network
I think I would be buying some of these if they were a third of their actual price. Probably it will be 1-2 years from now, but I am quite confident that we will get there.
That qnap looks interesting. I didn't know that there were cheap-ish 2.5gig switches like this trendnet out there though so it is a cool option too.
If you look at the history of consumer and some business hardware, (here in the UK), you will see that even in the first decade of this century motherboards, until later in the decade were still at 100 mbps, though Laptops/notebooks had gone up to a Gig. That meant a lot of places still had 100 MB infrastructure with 1 Gig uplinks. It was only as more items got 1 gig that the market moved. So before the end of that decades where I worked we had gone to 1 Gig throughout with a couple of 10 Gig links, but hey were expensive. You found alternative way to increase uplinks, etc bandwidth if required. These days I only run a small home lab and that is still on 1 Gig and is OK for my current requirements though will look at going higher when the prices significantly reduce, or my needs change. The benefit of 2.5 gbps is that I can continue most likely to use my CAT5E cabling, and I have boxes of that in the shed, even maybe be able to handle 5 gig at a pinch. However what would be interesting is due to reduced costs of production as sales increase and prices come down will there then be that much difference in costs between a 2.5 and 5 gig switch on a per port basis.
Incidentally all my switches are metal cased. The only item that isn't is my router that connects via copper to FTTC. Regarding the port indicating LEDs. I do agree that above the port is best. Where I worked we had racks of switches and most indicators were above the port and they were so easy to detect that they were fully operational, and at what bandwidth , than the few that were to the side of the ports.
For a home what I am looking for is 18 ports. 4 x 2.5gbe poe for wifi, 4 x 1gbe poe for cameras, 4 x 2.5gbe for desktops and nuc, 4x 1gbe for tvs and other legacy devices, and 2 x 10gbe for servers/ Nas.
Maybe a 26 port that you double the nonPOE ports.
I stumbled over (didn't try yet but think about getting) the Zyxel XGS1010-12 which I think is another interesting unmanaged switch - same price range but it enables interconnecting 1gbit, 2,5gbit and 10gbit sfp+
Personally, I think 2.5Gbps is a waste of everyone's time and money. Just go straight to 10Gbps. The fact that even SATA SSDs are bottlenecked by it makes it feel old on arrival.
It feels like a complete ripoff. I am surprised how hard Intel pushes 2.5G vs 10G
The downside of 10G (at least as it is) is its massive power draw. And in some countries that makes the difference.
No-one has created at 10GbE copper device that works on Cat6 @ 100m, I don't think? People don't want to change all the cables in walls, that's a big driver for 2.5GbE. Along the same lines: WAPs that push > 1Gbps and use PoE.
@@SuperSpecies Cat 6A supports 100m 10GBE and it's not that expensive. If you have legacy cables that are really pushing the limit on the length you can always auto-negotiate NBASE-T on the 10GBE NIC. 2.5GB is penny pinching. Give my clients NICs that support up to 10GBE by default.
@@kwinzman many installations have cat 5e and cat 6 installed, and replacing the wiring in the wall with cat 6a is a massive capital expenditure and logistical nightmare at some places. Sure a new site go with cat 6a or better, no doubt.
I remember when 2.88 MB floppy disks came out but then disappeared without widespread adoption because folks were not willing to pay double. I'd pay $50 for a 5-port switch, but I'd have little interest in upgrading whilst my internet connection speed is capped at 200 Mbps.
Excellent points, Patrick!
I just spent the last few days doing a "drop-in" replacement of a Linksys 8-port Gigabit switch with an 8-port TP-LINK 2.5GbE switch. That new 2.5G switch caused zero problems. All the problems we encountered happened with 4 x USB 3.0 to 2.5GbE ethernet adapters, and 1 x 2.5GbE PCIe x1 add-in card -- trying 5 different vendors.
Because we still use Windows XP on our backup storage servers, we naturally had hoped the USB 3.0 dongles would work on those PCs. NOT!! Yes, I already hear you saying that XP is obsolete. HOWEVER, the Realtek website does list a download option for "WinXP Auto Installation Program" under the RTL8156 and RTL8156B controllers.
And, despite my good faith efforts to request Tech Support (now that I am a paying customer), what few responses I did receive from the sellers were terribly inadequate. The email address for Tech Support at asustor is "over quota" and my question to them is still waiting for answers.
I haven't told StarTech yet, but their dongle starts up at 100Mbps, and must be DISABLED and ENABLED in Network Connections to change the speed to 2.5Gbps. Also, that dongle required a hybrid USB cable that supplies extra power from a USB 2.0 port: the latter problem may be due to limited power available from the USB 3.0 ports at the real I/O panel of our HP Z220 tower workstation. So, a hybrid USB cable fixed that one fault.
The good news is that all 5 of those adapters installed mostly OK on Windows 7 and Windows 10 PCs. And, the excellent software at drivereasy.com made it relatively simple to upgrade device drivers to the latest versions.
If you're not already aware of the latter website, I have been updating drivers with their Windows program for several months now, and I have not had one single problem with any driver updates.
I should add that our new TP-LINK switch is on the floor, below one workstation monitor, and we point a DC fan directly at that switch because it does get warm to the touch.
Hope this helps.
p.s. Yes, Patrick, your astute analysis of prices is RIGHT ON THE MONEY: prices should naturally go downwards as awareness of 2.5GbE expands worldwide.
I should add that performance is what we expected, when other overhead sources are taken into account. For example, by watching the Ethernet port activity with Windows 10 Task Manager, the real-time graphs do approach a 2.5-to-1.0 ratio with averages of 10-to-4, more or less. This ratio is most obvious when we run XCOPY twice in a row, and file properties are mostly memory-resident during the second run of that Windows utility. Of course, if a Windows 10 PC uses a 2.5G controller to talk with a Windows 7 PC with a 1.0G controller, the overall speed is reduced by the latter "weak link" in that chain. What impressed me the most was the obvious speed jumps we saw when copying large driver software folders between 2.5G ports, particularly when both PCs were cabled directly to the TP-LINK switch, and did not need to traverse any switch "cascades" or pass traffic thru our router. With that experience under our belts, we're now planning to upgrade to TP-LINK model TL-NG421 PCIe x1 add-in cards, and keep the dongles in spare parts inventory, for now. We were delighted to discover that the latter add-in card also works in a PCIe Gen1 x1 expansion slot i.e. same raw bandwidth of 2.5G per x1 lane. Last thing: I'll be contacting our router vendor to ask if they have any plans to offer a drop-in 2.5G replacement for our 4-port Gigabit router.
I really appreciate that you covered power consumption since 10gig switches are power hogs compared to 1gig.
Another great video, thanks Patrick! I have seen DOCSIS 3.1 modems fail auto-negotiate with 2.5Gbps equipment - so if you can - doublecheck the port settings. Might need some Firmware updated. Also I'd rather buy slightly used 10Gbps quality equipment for the same $.
Not sure if I could go fully unmanaged so bought the zyxel xgs1210 so I could get 10 g uplinks with couple of 2.5 gig ports, with vlan support for about the same price as these.
After looking for years for faster than 1GbE solutions, I finally made a jump to 10GbE over fibre. Cards are super cheap on eBay and 2 cheap Chinese SFP+ modules + fibre patch cable is cheaper than a DAC cable or a pair of -T modules.
For me personally, I'd love to upgrade my small homelab to something faster than 1Gb, but for it to be really feasible for me, I think things would have to hit the $10-12 per port range or
I think $10/port gives them enough of a profit over the $3/port for current unmanaged switches and still feels like a fair price as a user. Especially since OEM's are now including 2.5Gb Ethernet as standard equipment. It's no longer a special order item like a 10/40GB device.
I agree that the $100-120 range is the point at which these go from being "early-adopter" to "worth considering." It'd still be great to see them get below 3 figures, though, then things like that QNAP with the 10GbE uplink ports won't seem so attractively priced.
Motherboards that include 2.5GbE still tend to be on the higher end of the scale, roughly $150 and up, so there's still some of that early adopter premium in play. It's still good to see the new NUCs adopting it.
My B550 board has 1x1GbE & 1x2.5GbE, so I've been tempted to try it out. Plan A was to get an 8-port 2.5GbE switch, for future expension, and add a PCIe card to my Home Lab rig (currently just one system with a far-too-loud PSU). After spending ages looking for an attractive 2.5GbE switch, I gave up and ended up buying a Netgear GS108Ev3 for about $30 to play with the switch management features (I've only ever had unmanaged switches). Plan B is to stick with 1GbE for the rest of the network and have a direct 2.5GbE link between the home lab server and main PC. Still, finding a 2.5GbE card that's reasonably priced (and doesn't look like it'll break if you look at it funny) is proving difficult.
I recently purchased a Ubiquiti Enterprise 24 PoE for my home with 12x1Gb, 12x2.5Gb, 2x10Gb SFP+ ports, at $800. I love it because it supports Comcast's 1.2Gb internet at full speed, and has PoE for security cameras and APs. Not all of the ports are 2.5Gb, but for the security cameras and non-core equipment that's not a concern. It seemed like a good compromise, especially for the PoE.
48, 24 ports switches around my place.
Only use 5 port switches for a week when testing temporary equipment
I have been looking for a switch with the LEDs separate from the ports. I prefer it since then I can tape over them and don’t need to see the blinking. (For home use).
I don’t want to spend over $100 for a 4/5 port unmanaged switch. At that size its just going to be home use plugged in and forgotten about. That comes out to 1 uplink and $25 per device added to the wired network.
Would love to see 8 port 2.5Gbe switches with 2 10Gbe ports coming in under $200, that's auto-buy territory for me!
I enjoy your reviews. I am data center focused myself, and always think about speeds, buffers, etc.
For hosts that network boot, 2.5 Gig is potential interest. Typically we'll have 40 hosts 1gig, with 4x10 uplinks bonded (48 hosts if we want slightly over subscribed).
With 40-48 hosts at 2.5Gig, I would need 6 25 gig uplinks (SFP) or 4 40gig uplinks. (QSFP).
10Gbase-T is getting cheaper all of the time. I can see hospitals moving over to this. If all of the nodes are 2.5Gig, we'll need better path to the boot/management nodes and upgraded nodes.
Same thing happened when the transition on the desktop from 10/100 to 1000Base-T occurred. Will probably be another year or two and we'll see 2.5G at less than $100; nice that they're fanless. So many of the first cheap gig-E switches that would fail from overheating due to crappy or clogged fans. Back then it was a little different in that a home NAS was not anywhere near as common. The upshot of this is that these switches with no higher-speed uplink ports are really only for the smallest and most basic networks while the one's like you mention with dual sfp+ ports now have a much bigger market. A managed switch with fiber capable 10G ports for a ~$250 is a steal. Make the jump people!
Hello Patrick. Might you review the new for 2022 teg-s750 5 port 10Gb base-t switch? Thanks!
Im pretty much at the same page as you are talking about, i want a 2.5gb switch, but they are far to expensive atm to make it an option, versus just sticking to a 1gbit switch, it is faster sure, but for my use, it wouldnt make a hell of difference, at least to a point where a 10x price premium is worth it. To be relevant pricewise it would have to come down to something like $60-$70 for a 5 port switch.
I just pulled the trigger on the 5 port switch for 130 bucks I feel a little bad but I really like the speed to my unraid server
The TEG-S380 seems impressive, but there's been a cheaper 5 port option for around a year now, the QNAP QSW-1105-5T, which is $110.
The QNAP always seems to be on backorder....you know of any sites that has 1 in stock for $110?
@@thecockflock You can always put an order in at B&H and just wait for the backorder to come in.
@@guspaz The feasibility of doing that would be related to how urgently they would need the switch.
@@thecockflock At the time of writing this, All Qnap has some, but for $124 instead of $110. My point is that it's still cheaper than the $140 for the TEG-S350.
@@sagetechnology4913 Sadly still way above the goal of $10-12 per port that they were talking about
For my home network I would struggle to spend much more on a 2.5gb switch than 1gb. The way I'm thinking about it is the use case for every device needing >1gb would be if I have an internet connection that can saturate it, but I don't so realistically there are only a few devices passing around large amounts of local traffic. If the amount of traffic is noticeably slow on a 1gb connection then at that point I'm just going to move those devices to 10gb.
You see it the same way that I do ... 11:38 ... "That gap is too much". I agree. That's why I don't think that 2.5Gb will take off. Most people rather spend a little more and get 10Gb. At the price point of $24/port, that is just stupid and ridiculous. Way too much to make it universally acceptable in its pricing right now. Basically, 10G is gonna be accepted faster due to these high prices.
The price point of 2.3Gb Switches is part of why I didn't worry about getting 2.5Gb Ethernet on my motherboard when I built this machine a year ago. Switch prices are just too high to justify using it yet for me.
I am starting to think about some devices for my new house (haven't purchased yet). My initial thought was a 2.5gbe with PoE to run wireless APs through out the house. However I am still looking in to wireless options
Gees port costs are so high,
The switch prices need to come down to $10 or less per port
We should be pushing to 10G and not wasting time on a stop-gap 2.5g. Protocol that won't really live long enough to make it into mainstream devices.
It's like a 250mbps port instead of a1G
as always, a great review. Even if the switch does not support any vlan mgt, you can ALWAYSs program your NIC in OS to support VLANs, with a VLAN ID. Just moving the management around a little :-)
Totally, but we cannot say that is a feature of the unmanaged switch.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo good call
@@Knightrider159 but the statement remains true either way.... If VLAN manip was available; that would put the switch in the managed platform It is VLAN aware and will move packets based on VLAN ID intra switch (VLAN1)
I'm currently looking at an upgrade project were I would like to add a 2x port 2.5Gbps Ethernet NIC to a small group of workstations and bond the channels for a maximum transfer rate of 5Gbps. If the price per port was in the 12 - 13 dollar range then the cost of two switches and the NICs would be acceptable.
Edit: Also, I absolutely won't be buying any of these until I can get a 5-port switch for $60 max. I think your $12/port assessment makes perfect sense.
I completely agree with your thoughts on the price jump from 1Gbe to 2.5Gbe. I don't really see the justification...it doesn't seem like the parts or engineering work are dramatically different from 1Gbe. So ... it seems like the prices make no sense. It should be *way* cheaper. Like less than half lol
Waiting for a 20 port with 4xSFP+10 for ~$300 to replace my trendnet 20+4SFP+ that i bought several years ago for ~$250
I too dont like the seperate pannel for LED activity/link state
For me, for my home network, I'd need two switches(Bedroom, Living Room), and if they were around $30 each I think I could pull the trigger, but I'd need 2.5g ports for 3, maybe 4 PCs, for those, maybe $10ish each(for USB/PCIe 1 port adapters)? My Router is currently only 1g, but I spent like $120 well over a year(maybe 2?) ago on a 'good' one(by home router standards) to last a while, so I'd prefer not to replace it. It has a USB3 port, not sure if it supports USB network adapters though. Not sure how I would organize things.
You are so much right. 1GBit has been dirt cheap for like 20 years. I remember when I got from 1MBit Ethernet to 1000MBit Ethernet in less than 15 years and after that: Nothing. Overpriced. I even used 40GBit Infiniband for a while to directly link my two most important systems and even that was a ton cheaper than 10GBit ethernet. This is utter desperation.
My first computer to oversaturate a 1Gbit link was a cheapish Athlon 600Mhz with a cheap software RAID5 in 1999.
My first computer to oversaturate a 10Gbit link was a lowest end Xeon with 2x2000Mhz and a single U2 drive in 2012.
And now in 2021 we are still literally shitting bricks at 1Gbit.
Some review about how hot they get under full load would be interesting. Some buyers report heat problems.
Are these Trendnet switches backward compatible with 1GbE devices i.e. Printers, AV Receivers, Streaming devices, and older equipment that only have a 1GbE NIC? If so I think they would really be good as Media switches but still allow for 2.5GbE capable computers. Are there 2.5GbE SFP+ RJ-45 modules that can allow connection to 10GbE switches?
I like my switches with ports on the back and activity LEDs on the front.
can you please review the Zyxel Multi-Gig 12-Port? $150 for 2xsfp+ 10gb, 2x 2.5gbe , and 8x 1gbe. It seems like a great jack of all trades for the price, if using 2 of them as a backbone for a home network with nas in its own room, while most devices still have gigabit.
Can you please review some of the TP-Link switches from their impressive lineup like the TL-ST1008F
@servethehome - the QNAP QSW-1105-5T was selling for $100 a few months ago.
For an 2.5GbE 8 port unmanaged switch around 100USD is what I would be willing to spend. Around the 200USD mark I would rather just hop on ebay or similar sites and pick up a used managed switch. But to be completely honest I wish companies would just skip 2.5GbE and go right to 5 or even 10GbE.
Intel pushes 2.5GB on all their new motherboards, I don't understand it either. Must be saving a few cents vs 5/10GBE.
I agree with you, 5GbE is around the same speed of SATA SSD's (~550Mb/s) and also USB 3.0 speed. Should be bare minimum for 2021.
2.5Gbe is the most cat5e can do.
@@kwinzman i don't mind intel doing this as much, as we can add network cards. Would be better if they went to 5GBE, but at least they are leaving the GB phase. However, we hardly have any option for switches at 5GBE (or more) that does not cost an arm and a leg...
I would have an easier time paying more overall for a cheaper 5GBE switch + adding cards on each machine (but not all at the same time, perhaps 1 or 2 each month) than having 5GBe on all machines from the start, but paying a high price upfront for the switch...
Obviously would be better if 5Gbe or more were the intel move AND switches were cheap :)
@@AudreyRobinel And even rarer is to see an actual 25GBE SFP28 uplink or ideally 2 SFP28 uplinks on your 5/10GBE access switch. For something that would actually make sense on the switch side you suddenly pay 100 times more than for similar 1GBE switches with SFP+ uplinks.
Are they different chips that can be used in unmanaged switches the way there are for wifi modules like for eg. Intel vs Realtek chips? And if there are, what's the performance and reliability differences between the different chips available, if any?
Most home users won't need 2.5gbps and the power users have already gone to 10gbps. 2.5/5gbps equipment is DOA. Most systems are coming with dual 1gbps ports and you can bond ports and be way more cost effective. You can get dual port USB3 adapters for cheap.
Even though it's unmanaged there are a lot of unmanaged switches that supports vlan. Would be good to know if by any chance, it supports for VLANs.
Unmanaged means one does not have a management interface on the switch to set VLANs there. One can still set VLANs on other switches/ NICs in the infrastructure.
If by "supports vlan" you mean passes the vlan tag through unmodified then all dumb layer 2 switches "support vlan". The switches that don't are using a switch chip that can handle tagging and untagging vlans but it's just configured improperly and being unmanaged you can change it from how the manufacturer configured it. Likewise some switch chips out there support STP but can be configured improperly to effectively just eat BPDU messages and forward all traffic thus breaking STP for those ports when hooked up to a switch that supports STP. As far as a dumb layer 2 switch is concerned, 802.1q frames are valid regular ethernet frames. The source and destination mac addresses are in the right spot, the first 16 bits of the 802.1q tag are 0x8100 so as far as the switch is concerned, this is the ethertype field to pass along unmodified. It extends the max length of a frame, but modern switch chips generally all support larger frames anyways.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Just a few weeks ago I read about a switch that was unmanaged but had a dip switch that when enabled put each port in a separate VLAN. A switch like that with a 10G uplink (and preferably 2.5G ports) would be awesome.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo sure, it's that some tp-link switches has a "management" ip that you can access and do Vlan tagging, but they are still considered unmanaged. Tp-link used to call them Smart Switch... Idk if I'm wrong but for SOHO just being able to do Vlan tagging is great!
@@AndrewMerts I expressed it poorly. What I meant was that I've seen some SMB switches that are not managed but can still do Vlan tagging. I used to have a SG108e from tp-link that could do Vlan tagging, was not a managed switch, and it couldn't do LACP for example.
Idk why they're so pricey now, but back in November 2020, I was able to get the QNAP QSW-1105-5T 5-Port Unmanaged 2.5GbE Switch for only $109
Finally someone mentioning the power consumption :)
20 years ago I wired a house for 10/100. That infrastructure still works for 1 GbE. I might be able to get 1 Gbit Internet here, but I don't feel all that constrained by the ~100 Mbit I usually get.
My currently router is limited to 1 GbE. I can bond ports on the back side to get a bit more bandwidth between the house network and my home lab, but for that use 1 GbE is good enough. I will eventually need to find a way to get 2.5 GbE to the router from the WLAN, but not until I upgrade the APs.
The key problem for 2.5 GbE for me is that it really only makes sense if you are regularly saturating 1 GbE, and if that case, you are probably going to want 10 GbE (or better) anyway.
I have ordered a KeepLink 2.5 gbs unmanaged switch. It has a 10 sfp+ gbs port. If I have a line at 3 gbs coming it. Will it see it or everything will be maxed out at 2.5 ??? Thought of using a transceiver sfp+ to rj45 Thanks
I think if you go over $100 it has to have compelling features such as a 10Gb uplink or be managed. An unmanaged 8 port 2.5 with a single 10 gig (sfp+) at around 150 would be right around where I would be ok with it. I would prefer it nicely in the 120-140 range. A 5 port unmanaged 2.5gb switch needs to be under $75 for general adoption or it needs to have a higher uplink to be any more expensive.
Heck. Mikrotik's 10G offerings (4+1, and 8+1) at $140 and $256 respectively... managed, fanless... very competitive as well, as long as you're buying DAC cables and not having to invest into SFP modules. It's good to see new 2.5G offerings, but I agree the price needs to come down further.
you can find used QSFP switches around that price point too if you want to go for 40gb...
@asdrubale bisanzio indeed
@@callowaysutton those are all super noisy… unless noise isn’t a concern.
Plus the Mikrotik switch allows to have dual PSU. That's crazy good at this price.
and fwiw... I didnt receive a notification you have put a video out... I generally consume your videos on a routine basis...
With 1G switches at $2 - $3 per port, going to 10x the price for 2.5G is totally unreasonable. Yes, they’ll definitely sell some at those prices, but sales volumes won’t go up until they get it down to around $10 per port. I’m pretty sure for most consumers, 2.5 times the performance is just not worth much more than 2 or 3 times the price.
I agree to 100% , and this as someone who do e the change to 10gbit 2 years ago. That might be different for 5gbit, as even with 10gbit you have to decide if you rather do the step to SFP+ anyway. The switch manufacturer just missed the opportunity to really make a step to 5gbit and offer a real compromise for consumer. With the same cabling able to handle the 5x throughput.
I got a new motherboard with 2.5 and now have the itch to use it. There are cable modems with 2.5g now and some consumer routers with 10G wan. Too bad my wish list is nearing 900 bucks which is hard to justify for my casual use and occasional home lab fun
I agree, the jump is too high for "only" 2.5g. The price jump for a smaller 10g microtik is not much more so my thought would be to hold off until you absolutely need to jump up, then go directly to the 10g models.
For switches, do people do benchmark on it? Like some kind of "query per second" kind of benchmark?
On unmanaged switches we can basically do throughput, we could do pps. On higher-end switches, one tends to have a CPU, memory, and storage running Linux so perhaps one could run a database benchmark on the CPU. Most people would be more interested in the network switch performance than the CPU performance there though.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Ahh ok , cool thank you so much for the info!
Your pricing (16:50) is somewhat right. They should charge double say what 1Gb switches are, say $55 for FIVE 2.5Gb ports and
then (maybe) $85 / $90 for EIGHT 2.5Gb ports. If not, I'd buy 10G switch instead. It has to be HALF what they are charging now.
The market for 2.5 Gb is very limited in the consumer market. Wifi has improved significantly and for the wire folks, the logical upgrade path from 1 Gb is 10 Gb.
What are the limitations of running 2.5gb @ 1500 vs like 9000? In 10gb there can* be a fairly big jump in throughput... And with an unmanaged switch can you even run @9000 and not create more issues then you fix?
I'm doing switch upgrades for our whole small office network this year. The killer product for me would be a 48-port layer-2 1u multigig switch with SFP+ (at least) uplinks and no PoE for about $1000. It somehow seems ridiculous to me that I'm pretty much stuck with 1g access ports in 2021, without spending at least $4k/switch, where I can get the equivalent 1g switch for about $500. And the office isn't quite small enough to run off just one 48-port model...
You can get two CRS326-24S+2Q for $1000, probably not what you need since it has no RJ45 ports but you get two switches with 24SFP+ 10G and 2 QSP+ 40G
@@bjornSE That is a good deal, but doesn't work as an access switch - at least not without $40/port worth of SFP+ modules. Seen some good deals out of Mikrotik, but I've also heard of a decent rate of software problems on their switches, so not something I'd bet my reputation on quite yet.
It’s interesting but when options for 5 or 10 Gb switches are not to much more it would make the 2.5 switches irrelevant at those prices
Don't forget that DOCSIS 3.1 modems are shipping with 2.5G now.
@asdrubale bisanzio Oh they can. I know Comcast at least has rolled out full speed docsis 3.1 in select areas, and it will break gigabit with the right conditions (ofc your cap will be blown in 5m, but that's Comcast for ya). They'd put 10Mbps PHY's in those modems if they could get away with it. They put 2.5Gbps because they need it in their top configurations.
For those looking for 10Gbe, check out this 8-port switch: *Netgear XS708E v2* You can get them used in the $400 range.
Looks great, but it needs two 25GB/40GB or 100GB uplinks. I don't like SFP+ on 10GB access switches.
These prices are reasonable imo, but I cant justify yet conidering my firewall is my only 2.5Gbit device, when I have at least two devices at this speed i might start looking at one
To start with paying double the 1GbE equivalent is the pass fail line for most of my casual use acquaintances, but over time that has to come down. For the more advanced 2.5GbE isn't worth the hassle and they're looking to 10GbE, even if they have to go used.
10 ports please: 8 x 2.5GbE (4 w/ PoE), 2 x SFP+. $200. It's OK I'll wait.
QNAP QSW-M2108-2S for $250, that is pretty close.
I'd by one today if I could get an 8 port for like $70, but I also have no 2.5gbe devices right now.
I hope mikrotik brings a 4-8 port 2,5g with 1-2 sfp+ for around 150... This would be perfect
CRS312-4C+8XG-RM from Microtik 99% fits the bill with a couple of well valued inclusions; 1. Managed 2. 8 Ports fully capable of 10.100/1000/2500/5000/10000 G all over copper and four SFP+ ports for the QFSPK 25G / 40G / 100G hobbist. Price per port for the over all value received is almost a 2:1 on this unit reviewwed here.... and no where near the feature set....
@@tmcarter3 and it is really cheap....
@@DarioSeibold well... as with most things.. cheap is not always best :-)
My current problem with 2.5GBE is that while it is faster than GBE, it is not super fast. It is aproximately good hard drive fast, or a bit faster. But it is way slower than even sata ssd speeds, and let's not even talk about nvme. So going 2.5GBE for me is already a compromise, i settle for lower speed that what i would want. I could be ok with that if it were cheap, but it is still quite expensive... So i feel like i am accepting "MEH" performances and still paying premium...
I would feel more satisfied by paying twice as much, but for 10GB lan.
The QSW-308S is an 8-port gigabit switch with three 10 gigabit SFP+ ports for $139 USD. They have an excessive number of variants of it based on if it's managed or not, or how many SFP+/10 gig copper ports it has. Add management and a fourth SFP+ port for $40, or add a secondary 2.5/5/10 gig RJ45 port to an SFP+ for $30 a pop (it's cheaper than a copper 10 gig SFP+ module). They range from $139 for that cheapest unmanaged one (QSW-308S), to $299 for the managed one with four SFP+ and four 10 gig copper ports (QSW-M408-4C) or the one with eight 2.5 gig ports and two SFP+/copper 10 gig ports (QSW-M2108-2C). Microtik also has a $99 switch that's an 8-port GigE with two SFP+ ports.
@@guspaz Hello! this is a really interesting reference!
I currently own the mikrotik 99$ switch (and in retrospect, i should have bought the larger version, with 24 gb lan and still 2 SFP+ for 140$).
The QNAP offer is really interesting, for now 3SFP+ would totally do it for me... and with four i'd be set for my next phase (a TrueNAS box, while keeping the previous OMV nas).
300$ is a bit more that what i'd like to pay, however, for 8 10Gb ports, copper and SFP+, this is really nice. If i'm in at 200$ perhaps adding 50% more and getting full 10Gb is the way to go. Plus copper 10Gb means that i don't have to buy cages. However 10GbE cards seems more expensive than 10Gb SFP+ cards.
@@AudreyRobinel If you already have the $99 microtik one, you may want to simply buy their 4xSFP+ switch ($150, CRS305-1G-4S+IN) and connect it to your existing switch, either with a 1 gig uplink via the 305's gigabit copper port, or via one of the SFP+ ports with a direct attach cable. However, that would only get you two additional SFP+ ports over what you have now, due to the two ports consumed by the uplink connection. The $270 CRS309 solves that problem by having 8xSFP+ ports, but now the cost is starting to get out of control.
@@guspaz that was the plan!
with both, i'd have a total of 4 available ports (2+4 -2 for uplink). But i have been looking at the 8 ports variant too, since if i'm in for 150$, i may well add 120 more and be set for a long time (i can see how i fill 4 SFP+ ports, but i don't have plans that would fill 8 for quite some time. So nice headroom for my use case here!)
I have also taken note of their 24 SFP+ switch, with 2 40Gb links :)
Way too expensive for what i am doing, but at 500$, this seems like an amazing per port value, and 40Gb links is something i didn't even imagine that would ever be in my price range.
the 40Gb link would be nice for a SSD cache on the NAS :D (but then i need to add a pool of fast NVME drives, a 40Gb lan card to the NAS, probably a beefier CPU, more ram, etc... gets out of hand quickly ^^)
I agree. I wouldn't consider buying into 2.5G until I can find a 8 port below 100$. It's not like 2.5G is for enthusiast when we even have ports on NUC systems, and for mainstream adoption the 100$ barrier is kind of a big deal.
It seems that we are finally about to rapidly bridge from early adopters to more mainstream users for multi gig. The early adopters are much more likely to have 10 gig NAS/server within their network, like I do.
I feel many with media servers want to cut latency and speed up throughput that supports 10g use cases.
So at this stage not having a 10G uplink takes out an influential part of the early adopter population, but fits with a more mass market group who will be hard pressed to justify the price point.
I currently use the managed 12 port Zyxel XGS1210-12 with 2-10g SFP+, 2-2.5, & 8-1g. I was hoping to be able do link aggregation for failover, but have not figured out how to work that on a RMBPro and TrueNAS, but the unit falls close to the same price point with much lower cost per port @$15/each.
Would love to see more in the latency these devices have to gauge full performance.
My 24 port Cisco Gigabit POE switch cost me $185 in May of 2020. I'd take another one of those at that price over any 2.5 Gig at those prices.
My price is $100 for an 8 port 2.5G switch. I have one backbone going from the basement to the study that is slightly bottlenecked at times with in-home network traffic that would benefit. But I'm cheap I'll wait on the prices to come down.
$10 USD per port is the maximum price for widespread adoption. It's just low enough to be rationalised by the average consumer. For enthusiasts on a budget, this is affordable and they'll not just buy it, they'll recommend it to all their friends. For enthusiasts with more money, 10GbE makes more sense.
I went with a MicroTik SFP+ switch instead, crazy how expensive these are for the speed.
I think $100-$120 is a reasonable price that would push mass market adoption. That's inexpensive enough that I could justify throwing that in at my folks house so the handful of devices with higher speed NICs they have could actually have fast access to the NAS I built them
Some 2.5 Gb switches are running to hot in use (and failing). Can you say how this brand runs in use?
Sure, in a fantasy world they wouldn't cost anymore than 2.5x the 1Gbps, but I also realize from the manufacturers perspective there are economic and efficiency reasons that may not be entirely feasible. I also tend to go out of my way and spend a little more on 1Gbps un-managed switches to get things like a metal frame, maybe some additional mounting options, and possibly a little more reliability in the hardware given the price.
Before I heard you throw out your number, I was thinking around 4x what the cheap 1Gbps switches normally cost (with a little less margin for the type of switch I usually go for), which ended up being in the same ballpark as yours.
does anyone knows if you can run a NAS directly connected to a pc, perhaps ass a secondary way to connect ?