Best router for 10G internet?

[Telebubbies]

Hey guys. I am moving into a new place that has 10gbps internet (it was only like 10 euros more a month than the 2gbps package). Issue is, my current router (XR500) has a maximum WAN speed of 1gbps. 

The official internet speed of my new house will be 8gbps download and 600mbps upload, with my ISP also saying the upload also having a "burst" of 1200mbps.

I know that 10 gigs is complete overkill, but the pricing isn't bad at all. 

Can anyone recommend a router that has a 10 gigabit WAN with some 10gbps LAN ethernet ports too? 

I also saw that I will need to upgrade my ethernet to CAT7 to support 10gbps. Is that the right cable I would need? 

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated 

[mariushm]

No idea about a router with 10gbps ethernet ports.

No, you don't need Cat7.  Cat6 is good for lenghts up to around 40-50 meters, and Cat6a cable works up to 100 meters (maximum length)

 

 

[Arrogath]

2 minutes ago, Telebubbies said:

Hey guys. I am moving into a new place that has 10gbps internet (it was only like 10 euros more a month than the 2gbps package). Issue is, my current router (XR500) has a maximum WAN speed of 1gbps. 

The official internet speed of my new house will be 8gbps download and 600mbps upload, with my ISP also saying the upload also having a "burst" of 1200mbps.

I know that 10 gigs is complete overkill, but the pricing isn't bad at all. 

Can anyone recommend a router that has a 10 gigabit WAN with some 10gbps LAN ethernet ports too? 

I also saw that I will need to upgrade my ethernet to CAT7 to support 10gbps. Is that the right cable I would need? 

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated 

rather than finding a router with 10g ports, you could probably just get something with 5g ports for output and a 10g WAN port, assuming you aren't the sole user of the connection. You're also getting into specialized connectors for 10 gigabit which can make connecting older hardware onto your network more of a pain.

[porina]

Dare I suggest it... save the 10 euro a month and the hundreds you'd need to get this implemented, unless you really need it. Not just something to run speedtest once for bragging rights.

 

BTW personally I'm looking to implement 10gig only internally, and I'm struggling to get the price on that down by itself...

[mtz_federico]

I dont know of any all in one routers that support 10 gigabit routing (netgear has one "gaming router" that has 1 sfp+ for local connections), but would go for a self built pfsense router with two 10 gigabit NICs and pretty good specs so that it can actually route at 8 gigabit speeds.

You would need a 10 gigabit switch (microtik has a 5 sfp+ one) and you would also need 10 gigabit NICs on each computer that you want to have 10 gigabit

[Bombastinator]

This seems sort of clever of the company: charge extra for a service almost no one can actually use.  I personally would save the 10 euros a month.

[mtz_federico]

4 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

This seems sort of clever of the company: charge extra for a service almost no one can actually use.  I personally would save the 10 euros a month.

Yeah, unless you to experiment 2 gigabits is pretty good

[Donut417]

57 minutes ago, Telebubbies said:

Hey guys. I am moving into a new place that has 10gbps internet (it was only like 10 euros more a month than the 2gbps package). Issue is, my current router (XR500) has a maximum WAN speed of 1gbps. 

The official internet speed of my new house will be 8gbps download and 600mbps upload, with my ISP also saying the upload also having a "burst" of 1200mbps.

I know that 10 gigs is complete overkill, but the pricing isn't bad at all. 

Can anyone recommend a router that has a 10 gigabit WAN with some 10gbps LAN ethernet ports too? 

I also saw that I will need to upgrade my ethernet to CAT7 to support 10gbps. Is that the right cable I would need? 

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated 

Most routers can’t do Gigabit. So your not going to find something easily. Maybe look at enterprise gear. I don’t even think PFsense can do 10Gig. 

[beersykins]

I'd probably roll something Mikrotik although the 10G interface ones are super expensive.

 

If you have enough room to run a server or secondary PC just throw VyOS or PFsense or something on a server and use that for your WAN edge.

[Alex Atkin UK]

18 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Most routers can’t do Gigabit. So your not going to find something easily. Maybe look at enterprise gear. I don’t even think PFsense can do 10Gig. 

Correct, pfSense is supposed to struggle at those speeds.  Its one of the improvements coming to the next big update but we don't know if that is months or years away.

 

Would need to be a Linux based OS I think.

[jasonvp]

Any self-built router with the appropriate NIC can handle 10GigE easily.  But the result will be an OS that you need to configure manually: see Linux, FreeBSD, or the like.  It'll be up to you to install the OS, configure the interfaces, and set up the filtering/NAT/etc rules.

 

[Bombastinator]

The take away I’m seeing here is that while 10g is theoretically possible, and people are actually doing it, it is NOT something that is actually in the consumer space.  There’s going to be some complicated, advanced, and possibly very expensive stuff needed to actually make it work.  

[jasonvp]

27 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The take away I’m seeing here is that while 10g is theoretically possible, and people are actually doing it, it is NOT something that is actually in the consumer space.  There’s going to be some complicated, advanced, and possibly very expensive stuff needed to actually make it work.  

I don't know that i'd go quite that far with the hyperbole.  In the consumer space, we have a bunch of modern-day motherboards supporting 10GBASE-T right out of the box.  The Aquantia 10GigE controller chip is cheap, and a bunch of MoBos are including it now.  And have been for a couple of years, actually.  So there's a good start.

 

10GigE NICs are also fairly inexpensive, depending on which model you buy, and how many ports are on it.  Single and dual-port cards are readily available.  The "expensive" ones from Intel will just work with any OS; the lesser expensive ones might need their specific drivers installed on Windows (Linux/FreeBSD will already have them).

 

MicroTik(sp?) 4 x 10GigE switches aren't terrible.  $131 at Amazon, without optics.  An 8 x 10GigE from the same manufacturer is $240.  All well within the reach of "consumers".

 

All of this takes care of your LAN side, and does so relatively inexpensively and fairly easily.  Plug'n'play.  The WAN side becomes a bit more challenging because you need to go all-in with a Linux or FreeBSD (or NetBSD, or OpenBSD, or ...) solution on a home-built router.  None of this is difficult to learn for someone willing to put forth the effort, but it will take some effort.  The router itself wouldn't be expensive at all; a small motherboard, CPU, RAM, storage, and a PCI-E slot for a 2 x 10GigE card.

 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, jasonvp said:

I don't know that i'd go quite that far with the hyperbole.  In the consumer space, we have a bunch of modern-day motherboards supporting 10GBASE-T right out of the box.  The Aquantia 10GigE controller chip is cheap, and a bunch of MoBos are including it now.  And have been for a couple of years, actually.  So there's a good start.

 

10GigE NICs are also fairly inexpensive, depending on which model you buy, and how many ports are on it.  Single and dual-port cards are readily available.  The "expensive" ones from Intel will just work with any OS; the lesser expensive ones might need their specific drivers installed on Windows (Linux/FreeBSD will already have them).

 

MicroTik(sp?) 4 x 10GigE switches aren't terrible.  $131 at Amazon, without optics.  An 8 x 10GigE from the same manufacturer is $240.  All well within the reach of "consumers".

 

All of this takes care of your LAN side, and does so relatively inexpensively and fairly easily.  Plug'n'play.  The WAN side becomes a bit more challenging because you need to go all-in with a Linux or FreeBSD (or NetBSD, or OpenBSD, or ...) solution on a home-built router.  None of this is difficult to learn for someone willing to put forth the effort, but it will take some effort.  The router itself wouldn't be expensive at all; a small motherboard, CPU, RAM, storage, and a PCI-E slot for a 2 x 10GigE card.

 

That’s the thing: many parts are home user level but other parts aren’t, or are only barely entering it.  It’s not low price off the shelf purchase plug-and-play all the way through, and even if it most of the way through, if it’s not all the way it’s not all the way.

[Bombastinator]

I think the issue is @jasonvp is talking about lan and I am talking about WAN.  Both are internet.  There IS 10g internet around.  10g wan. The OP doesn’t have it.  It’s apparently being marketed as “10 gig” but it’s apparently actually 8/0.8 asynchronous.   Even old 1g won’t saturate for upload.  Within the household 10g LAN (10/10 synchronous) would be possible.  A lot more possible than it was even a few years ago.

 

There are even whole countries where it is prevelant.  None of them are in North or south America though, or possibly Europe either.  I lack data on that one.  10g lan is a lot easier to set up than it used to be. 

[jasonvp]

5 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I think the issue is @jasonvp is talking about lan and I am talking about WAN.  Both are internet.

I was talking about both, and no, both aren't "Internet".  WAN == Internet, LAN == ... not Internet.

[beersykins]

39 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

 It’s apparently being marketed as “10 gig” but it’s apparently actually 8/0.8 asynchronous.

Source?  Most fiber installations are symmetrical.  "8" isn't a part of any PHY signaling standard in Ethernet.

  

39 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

(10/10 synchronous)

I don't believe this is ATM

[Bombastinator]

27 minutes ago, beersykins said:

Source?  Most fiber installations are symmetrical.  "8" isn't a part of any PHY signaling standard in Ethernet.

  

I don't believe this is ATM

Source was the OP.  He said his 10g was 8/0.8 with “burst” to 1.2.  I personally am doubtful about “burst” as a concept as I am supposed to have a higher burst rate from my ISP but have never gotten it to actually function.

 

you don’t believe 10gig ethernet is 10/10?  

[beersykins]

Apparently I need to attend the Derek Zoolander center for kids who can't read good

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

you don’t believe 10gig ethernet is 10/10?  

There's some 10G GPON/EPON that have 10/1 in asymmetric mode but his offering is kind of a weird rate to shape at.  I have some 10g gear, if my carrier would get in the game that'd be sweet

[Oscar Kerkenaar]

On 2/12/2020 at 8:07 PM, Telebubbies said:

Hey guys. I am moving into a new place that has 10gbps internet (it was only like 10 euros more a month than the 2gbps package). Issue is, my current router (XR500) has a maximum WAN speed of 1gbps. 

The official internet speed of my new house will be 8gbps download and 600mbps upload, with my ISP also saying the upload also having a "burst" of 1200mbps.

I know that 10 gigs is complete overkill, but the pricing isn't bad at all. 

Can anyone recommend a router that has a 10 gigabit WAN with some 10gbps LAN ethernet ports too? 

I also saw that I will need to upgrade my ethernet to CAT7 to support 10gbps. Is that the right cable I would need? 

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated 

Hi Telebubbies,

I'm looking for something similar myself and found a few options, if money is no problem and you don't mind turning your wallet into a black hole...

 

• MikroTik CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS (Nice to consider, but, might become a bit slow if you want to do more complex routing stuff)
• MikroTik CCR1072-1G-8S+ (Just like with the previous MikroTik, you will need some inexpensive interfaces to connect a CAT7 cable to an SFP+ port)
• Ubiquity 10G SFP+ EdgeRouter Infinity (Probably the best value for money)

I hope it helps! :)

 

 

[mariushm]

You don't need Cat7 cable, Cat6 is good for up to 55 meters and Cat6a is good for 100 meters. 

 

For less than 30 meters (i'd recommend 10-15 meters at most)  you can use RJ45 - SFP+ transceivers , which convert a 10g RJ45 to SFP+ ... they're 10-30$ a piece. 

 

Other than this, sorry, no idea which router would be better for you.

 

[eece_ret]

To really get use of your 10G.  Id be looking at vyos or tnsr, on fast-current, x86 hardware.  Id be looking towards something Xeon-D based.  Use Intel NICs from X540 series, PHY layer to suite your needs (SFP+ would be most straight forward)

[jasonvp]

On 9/29/2020 at 4:20 PM, eece_ret said:

To really get use of your 10G.  Id be looking at vyos or tnsr, on fast-current, x86 hardware.  Id be looking towards something Xeon-D based.

We don't need "fast-current, x86 hardware" to handle 10G speeds at the router layer.  Really.  It's not necessary to spend a bunch of cash on a new CPU.  My home-built is using an Intel Core i7 4790 as its CPU, and is handling 4 10GigE interfaces just fine.  The key point is to make sure you have the PCI-E bandwidth.  A dual-port 10G NIC will require a x8 slot; in most cases that's pretty easy on a system that has an iGPU.

 

 

[Matt1632]

On 2/12/2020 at 7:07 PM, Telebubbies said:

Hey guys. I am moving into a new place that has 10gbps internet (it was only like 10 euros more a month than the 2gbps package). Issue is, my current router (XR500) has a maximum WAN speed of 1gbps. 

The official internet speed of my new house will be 8gbps download and 600mbps upload, with my ISP also saying the upload also having a "burst" of 1200mbps.

I know that 10 gigs is complete overkill, but the pricing isn't bad at all. 

Can anyone recommend a router that has a 10 gigabit WAN with some 10gbps LAN ethernet ports too? 

I also saw that I will need to upgrade my ethernet to CAT7 to support 10gbps. Is that the right cable I would need? 

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated 

I know its not quite the filling the ethernet requirements but the Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-routing-switching/products/udm-pro. It has SPF+ WAN and LAN ports along with an 8 port gigabit ethernet switch. Its resonably well priced but I don't know what region you're in so I can't quote. Pair it with a 10 gig ethernet switch that also has at least one SFP+ port you've found youself a pretty decent option and I'd guess for less than most alternatives with similar features.

Cat7 has more bandwidth than Cat6a and it all depends on the EMI of the enviroment but theoretically cat5e can take 10gig but  probably not in the real world. I use Cat6a Sheilded for my 10gig links (each about 45m) and they work without issue but its worth checking the distance because over copper the interference raises and can stop it from being able to carry 10gig. I ran into this problem with a long run I had and I had to switch to multimode fibre.

in summary for short runs Cat6a is fine.

[Falconevo]

Build a custom TNSR installation, its free now for home/non-commercial use.  This is what the pfSense guys have been working on along side the pfSense project but uses a different way of handling traffic using VPP (Vector Packet Processing) and DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) to minimise CPU cycles.  These are developments on Linux to substantially improve per core packet processing capability.  From around 1Gbit/s per core to around 10Gbit/s per core.

 

https://www.tnsr.com/

https://www.tnsr.com/tnsr-vs-pfsense-software

 

Can do 10G with ease, I would probably use Intel 10G, Mellanox Connect-X or SolarFlare cards in the installation.  Can pick them up pretty cheap, I'm using a SolarFlare SFN5121 in my colo/test chassis running TNSR.

Has no GUI, but does have a REST API and console access, can get it setup for normal internet usage pretty easily and may teach you something new.