10GbE within a 1GbE office network

[Lloyd]

Hi All,

 

I own a small video production company which operates out of a vacant office within an existing office building, owned by a friend. This friend has allowed me to utilise their internal network for internet but, as one might expect, it only supports 1Gbps. I feel this this will put a spanner in the works as I am looking to purchase a 10GbE NAS and edit directly from that.

 

How might I go about ensuring the devices I use can make use of the 10GbE connection to the NAS whilst whilst still utilising the existing 1GbE connection for the internet? Upgrading the entire office to 10GbE isn't an option as it's of no use to the other business that operates here.

[Skiiwee29]

Can you get a small 10gb switch to put between you and the internet connection that you can connect the PCs and NAS to?

[wojtepanik]

you can use nas as DAS, so 10 gig network without any switches or routers, just directly attached together.

[mariushm]

You can add a second network card in your computer, and use that for internet, while the 10gbps network card is connected directly to your NAS device.

 

You can buy a 10gbps network switch.

For example there's Microtik  CSS326-24G-2S+RM for 140$  https://mikrotik.com/product/CSS326-24G-2SplusRM

Has 24 x 1gbps ports and 2 x SFP+ 10gbps ports.

 

Or, there's Microtik CRS305-1G-4S+IN with 1 1gbps port and 4 SFP+ 10gbps ports for 150$ : https://mikrotik.com/product/crs305_1g_4s_in

and there's a 8 x 10gbps + 1 x 1 gbps  for 269$ : https://mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in

but at this point you have better options, like this quanta lb6m with 24 x 10gbps SFP+ ports and 4 x 1 gbps ports for $300 : https://www.unixplus.com/products/quanta-lb6m-24-port-10gbe-sfp-4x-1gbe-l2-l3-switch

 

[Lloyd]

51 minutes ago, wojtepanik said:

you can use nas as DAS, so 10 gig network without any switches or routers, just directly attached together.

Apologies if I wasn't clear - the intent is for a couple of extra editors to be able to use the 10GbE connection as well. We currently run off a couple of DAS solutions - 1TB SanDisk Extreme Portable drives/ Samsung T5's/ OWC Thunderbay (all Thunderbolt 3). Ensuring project sync across editors is proving to be a nightmare so my thought is that a central storage solution with a few Thunderbolt 3 to 10GbE adaptors and/or 10GbE network cards should do the trick.

[Lloyd]

1 hour ago, Skiiwee29 said:

Can you get a small 10gb switch to put between you and the internet connection that you can connect the PCs and NAS to?

That's the idea, but I was worried that the actual speed would be inhibited by the lower network speed...

[moriel5]

5 minutes ago, Lloyd said:

Apologies if I wasn't clear - the intent is for a couple of extra editors to be able to use the 10GbE connection as well. We currently run off a couple of DAS solutions - 1TB SanDisk Extreme Portable drives/ Samsung T5's/ OWC Thunderbay (all Thunderbolt 3). Ensuring project sync across editors is proving to be a nightmare so my thought is that a central storage solution with a few Thunderbolt 3 to 10GbE adaptors and/or 10GbE network cards should do the trick.

How about creating a "subnetwork" where you have a managed switch/router connected to the outside network, while allowing for 10Gbt/s internally (via 10Gb ethernet or SFP+, or even Wireless-AY/WiFi7, if you could somehow get the hardware for 60Ghz, especially on 4 streams)?

 

Edit: @Skiiwee29 already recommended this. I second that recommendation.

[moriel5]

7 minutes ago, Lloyd said:

That's the idea, but I was worried that the actual speed would be inhibited by the lower network speed...

Why would it be inhibited? You just need to connect everyone to the switch, and make sure that the switch's internal support is higher than everyone running at 10Gb/s at the same time (like, having each connection have it's own controller (this makes more sense), or if say, there are 10 editors, make sure that the switch can handle over 100Gb/s internally.

 

Edit: I had misunderstood the question, this does not have anything to do with the 1Gbt/s network.

[Skiiwee29]

3 minutes ago, Lloyd said:

That's the idea, but I was worried that the actual speed would be inhibited by the lower network speed...

nah, most switches are smart with this as it knows what is directly connected to it via a MAC address table it learns. As long as the computers and server can talk and are both directly connected to the same switch, it will bypass the 1gb LAN and use just the 10gb connection between the 2. 

[Lloyd]

Just now, moriel5 said:

How about creating a "subnetwork" where you have a managed switch/router connected to the outside network, while allowing for 10Gbt/s internally (via 10Gb ethernet or SFP+, or even Wireless-AY/WiFi7, if you could somehow get the hardware for 60Ghz, especially on 4 streams)?

So, if I have a 10GbE switch in my own office, to which all my devices are connected, then route the buildings' 1GbE into that as well, all devices connected tot he 10GbE would be able to access the NAS at full speed and not be affected by the wider 1GbE network, unless it's to access the internet?

[moriel5]

14 minutes ago, Lloyd said:

So, if I have a 10GbE switch in my own office, to which all my devices are connected, then route the buildings' 1GbE into that as well, all devices connected tot he 10GbE would be able to access the NAS at full speed and not be affected by the wider 1GbE network, unless it's to access the internet?

That's the general idea. Though it could always vary (Worst case scenario, one editor is watching YouTube, the bandwidth cost should only be payed by that editor).

[BurstDragon]

3 hours ago, Lloyd said:

So, if I have a 10GbE switch in my own office, to which all my devices are connected, then route the buildings' 1GbE into that as well, all devices connected tot he 10GbE would be able to access the NAS at full speed and not be affected by the wider 1GbE network, unless it's to access the internet?

That is the way modern decent switches are working.

 

It is more or less part of a technical design aspect called "non-blocking switching", "non-blocking throughput" or in general non-blocking architecture. This means the switch's backplane can support each of its port at full duplex speed.

For example, if a switch has twelve 10GbE ports, the switch's backplane will support at least 240Gbit/s of switching capacity.

 

If you want to get started into the 10GbE world and don't want to spend big numbers on your first switch in this class, I recommend the Netgear XS712Tv2.

It is around 1000$-1100$ which is a really good deal for twelve port 10GbE BASE-T switch (with the benefit of two of this ports being dual personality ports which can either be used as RJ45 or SFP+, in case you have to connect some fiber optical gear in the future).

It is web managed, so you don't have to learn any CLI commands, which should be completely sufficient for what you want to achieve with your setup.

 

Little OT: I would suggest you implement some kind of firewall between your network and the network of your friend to prevent unmonitored/unwanted access between those two networks. In case some ransomware or anything alike breaks out in the network of your friend, it could spread via Windows File Sharing (SMB) or other protocols, and vice versa if any computer on your network gets infected. But as I stated, that's another topic.

 

Greetings,

Flo

[Lloyd]

Awesome advice and guidance from everyone here! The whole setup is much clearer to me now and it's nice to feel assured that I can get the best from the hardware I'll be installing.

 

Thanks so much!