2.5gig switch

[Avid_Geek]

I'm looking to upgrade my home network to 2.5gig. I am upgrading to synchronous fiber gigabit this summer, and want to upgrade while I'm at it. I'm finding tons of pci cards for my PC's, but what about switches. I've heard you can find them pretty cheap, but don't want to buy anything that sucks or won't be worth it in the long run. Should it be managed or unmanaged also. Any help would be great! Thanks

[mariushm]

Actually 2.5g switches are a bit hard to find, there's not many of them and they're not really cheap... I see some at around 250$ :

 

ex 250$ : Amazon.com: NETGEAR 10-Port Multi-Gigabit/10G Smart Managed Pro Switch (MS510TX) - with 1 x 10G SFP+, Desktop/Rackmount, and ProSAFE Limited Lifetime Protection: Computers & Accessories

• ETHERNET PORT CONFIGURATION: 4 Gigabit ports and 2 1G/2.5G ports and 2 1G/2.5G/5G ports and 1 10G port
• FLEXIBILITY FROM UPLINK PORTS: 1 x 10G SFP+ port

imho it's not worth it.

Rather than spending 250$ on such a switch, you're better off spending 150$ on a sfp+ switch and buy 10g ethernet cards for 30-50$ each and you get 10g speeds.

 

For example here's a 4 x 10g + 1 x 1g rj45 from microtik for 140$ : Amazon.com: MikroTik 5-Port Desktop Switch, 1 Gigabit Ethernet Port, 4 SFP+ 10Gbps Ports (CRS305-1G-4S+IN): Computers & Accessories

 

You can connect it to the router/modem using the 1g ethernet port and then connect 4 computers / devices at 10g speeds.

 

You can use Ethernet to SFP+ transceivers (they work up to 30m of cable) to connect a RJ45 ethernet card to it : Amazon.com: 10G SFP+ RJ45 Copper Transceiver, 10GBase-T Module for Cisco SFP-10G-T-S, Ubiquiti, D- Link, Supermicro, Netgear, Mikrotik (Cat6a/7, 30-Meter): Electronics

 

You can use DAC cables to connect SFP+ cards to the switch :  Amazon.com: 10G SFP+ DAC Cable - 10GBASE-CU Passive Direct Attach Copper Twinax SFP Cable for Cisco SFP-H10GB-CU2M, Ubiquiti, D-Link, Supermicro, Netgear, Mikrotik, 2-Meter(6.5ft): Electronics

 

And 10g ethernet cards are cheap

 

For example 2 port 10g card with warranty and everything is 58$ : Refurbished: Supermicro AOC-STGN-I2S 10Gbe Ethernet Adapter Rev 1.01 - UNIXPlus.com