Looking for recommendations - 8+ port 10gb switch

[FAHEYGF87]

We are building a new office in about a year and i'm starting to look for tech upgrades from our current hardware.

 

Currently we have 6 desktops, 1 server, and 12 Microsoft Surface tablets floating around our office, along with 5 VOIP phones and everyones cell phones.

 

Our current switch is a 16 port netgear at 1gbps, which is fine, but i'd like to future proof a little bit.

 

I'd like to get the server and all the desktops connected to a 10gig switch, and everything else can connect through the old netgear switch/WAP.

 

Does anybody have any recommendations? Looking to spend around $500 for the switch and $100/$150 per station for the computers.

 

Thanks guys

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

What is the server doing? What types of files are you copying? Do the desktops have 10gbe? 

 

I probably wouldn't bother with 10gbe for most uses here, its really not worth it.

 

What 10gbe standard? fibre or copper? What features do you need on the switch? Do you need it managed?

 

Id probalby get one of the netgear ones, like this guy. https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Managed-8x10GBASE-T-Lifetime-Protection/dp/B01GTWPTJY

[FloRolf]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What is the server doing? What types of files are you copying? Do the desktops have 10gbe? 

 

I probably wouldn't bother with 10gbe for most uses here, its really not worth it.

 

What 10gbe standard? fibre or copper? What features do you need on the switch? Do you need it managed?

 

Id probalby get one of the netgear ones, like this guy. https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Managed-8x10GBASE-T-Lifetime-Protection/dp/B01GTWPTJY

i have that one and i am not entirely sure i like it

For some reason i don't get the entire 10gbit throughput even though i actually can get it out of a P2P connection.

It's lacking quite some features.

 

Also i'd probably get one that is also 2,5g and 5g compatible because as you said, 10gbe is probably overkill and not neccessary on most machines.

 

 

So also my question, what exactly are the PC's/Server doing that justifies spending all the money on 10gbe. 

 

 

 

Edit: i also recently came across this video. It's worth looking at, especially with your planned two switch thingy. 

 

[FAHEYGF87]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What is the server doing? What types of files are you copying? Do the desktops have 10gbe? 

 

I probably wouldn't bother with 10gbe for most uses here, its really not worth it.

 

What 10gbe standard? fibre or copper? What features do you need on the switch? Do you need it managed?

 

Id probalby get one of the netgear ones, like this guy. https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Managed-8x10GBASE-T-Lifetime-Protection/dp/B01GTWPTJY

The server hosts our customer data. ~4,000 customers with full service history, we have been growing about 5-10% per year for the past 4 years though.

 

We are using fairly consumer grade stuff at the moment. The destops will get pcie or thunderbolt 10gig adapters along with the switch.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, FAHEYGF87 said:

The server hosts our customer data. ~4,000 customers with full service history, we have been growing about 5-10% per year for the past 4 years though.

 

We are using fairly consumer grade stuff at the moment. The destops will get pcie or thunderbolt 10gig adapters along with the switch.

What bandwidth do you see to the desktops? 

 

My guess is your well below gigabit, and gigabit won't be a limit for a long time. Customer data is pretty small normally, and normally the clients are only loading a small amount of it at a time.

 

I don't see a reason to go 10gbe here now, seems like a complete waste.

[LAwLz]

If you're going to build a new office, and currently use mostly consume gear then I would recommend a complete network overhaul done by a professional network engineer. 

That will probably improve things way more than just throwing in some 10Gbps dumb (or not properly configured) switches. 

[FAHEYGF87]

4 hours ago, FAHEYGF87 said:

We are building a new office in about a year and i'm starting to look for tech upgrades from our current hardware.

 

Currently we have 6 desktops, 1 server, and 12 Microsoft Surface tablets floating around our office, along with 5 VOIP phones and everyones cell phones.

 

Our current switch is a 16 port netgear at 1gbps, which is fine, but i'd like to future proof a little bit.

 

I'd like to get the server and all the desktops connected to a 10gig switch, and everything else can connect through the old netgear switch/WAP.

 

Does anybody have any recommendations? Looking to spend around $500 for the switch and $100/$150 per station for the computers.

 

Thanks guys

 

 

I don't think you guys picked up on this part. This will be a 20 year office, and if i'm going to be buying new stuff anyways, why not go 10gig?

[kevin_m]

On 12/21/2020 at 4:49 PM, FAHEYGF87 said:

I don't think you guys picked up on this part. This will be a 20 year office, and if i'm going to be buying new stuff anyways, why not go 10gig?

I like the mikrotik switches if you are looking for something relatively basic and low cost. Would also consider using fiber over copper for 10gb (if this is possible), I have personally experienced too many issues reliably obtaining 10gb with around 20 meter cat6 (not cat6a) when cables are too close together; link speed tends to drop to 5gb. The industry is kind of in a weird state right now with copper (twisted pair) and 10gb, the power and cabling requirements can sometimes be constraints. Don't forget to look at your voip phones, not sure if you using PoE or are bridging a shared network cable to the desktop with them, most do not support 10gb or fiber.

 

I do not think 10gb is overkill if you are looking at upgrades, especially if you are transferring GBs of traffic at any point in time.

 

This would be the low cost fiber option(s):

https://mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in

https://mikrotik.com/product/crs317_1g_16s_rm

https://www.trendnet.com/products/10g-sfp-pcie-adapter/10-gigabit-pcie-sfp-network-adapter-TEG-10GECSFP-v2

 

 

I am kind of curious what other opinions are on new offices looking at faster than 1gb speeds for desktops and if they are considering fiber or staying with copper. I thought the LTT office was using 10gb copper without any problems.

 

 

 

[mynameisjuan]

2 hours ago, kevin_m said:

I am kind of curious what other opinions are on new offices looking at faster than 1gb speeds for desktops and if they are considering fiber or staying with copper. I thought the LTT office was using 10gb copper without any problems.

Multigig is the standard now for most deployments. The extra cost for 10g switches/routers as well as NICs is not worth it, with multigig  trickling in to the built in NICs now. Also the cost to re-run the cabling if Cat5e (which can do 10g up to 30m) is not cheap depending on the building layout or not allowed to depending on the lease. Unless you can see regular saturation at a gig, its a waste to upgrade for "future proofing" or why not.

 

LTT is the definition of the type of customer that needs high throughput to the host. Businesses even today barely use more than a few megs and realistically, $1000+ can be spent elsewhere in the network that will provide a larger benefit.

 

On 12/21/2020 at 5:49 PM, FAHEYGF87 said:

The server hosts our customer data. ~4,000 customers with full service history, we have been growing about 5-10% per year for the past 4 years though.

....

I don't think you guys picked up on this part. This will be a 20 year office, and if i'm going to be buying new stuff anyways, why not go 10gig?

1. The switch/NICs will not last 20 years. You should be looking at your needs at this point in time as well as what your expectations are in the next 2 years

2. What is your currently utilization? Are you seeing the desktops constantly hit a gig to the server? What type of traffic is this server utilizing?

3. What do you have for a firewall/router?

 

You mentioned 4,000 customers with consumer gear which most likely means its a flat network. I would spend the money on outsourcing an engineer to properly setup the network and towards a proper FW with proper policies with IPS (specifically anti-malware). No point in spending the money on a 10g switch when, not if, one of the PCs gets ransomware and compromises your entire business or malware unconstrained has full access to your network and now your customer information is leaked.

 

Unless your business is being crippled by a gig, please don't upgrade because "why not?" and think of other weak points that would be better spent.

 

[Darren]

On 12/22/2020 at 11:49 AM, FAHEYGF87 said:

I don't think you guys picked up on this part. This will be a 20 year office, and if i'm going to be buying new stuff anyways, why not go 10gig?

Realistically you have no what the business will be like in 20 years, or if it will even exist, so I would stop forecasting that far away. The thing to get right in the office is structural cabling and aside from that, everything could be ripped out every three years and you'll still be happy.

 

What I would be interested in is dealing with your server. If you have one server on premise that is the core to your business, why is it even there, move it to a daracentre, move to cloud etc. Your customer count may be going up by 5-10% per year, so invest in making sure that apps/infra holding all of your information are well protected. That server is probably the biggest IT risk you have.

 

The only reason I would even think of moving to 10Gbps is if you have current connectivity requirements that are not being met by the current solution you have a clear roadmap to getting there. A good amount of the time customers actually have no idea how much traffic they currently do because they have no monitoring in place of their current network. For all you know, you could be pitching a 10Gbps for a network that rarely reaches 100Mbps.

 

It looks like you have a budget of $1000, I would simply buy a new switch from a reputable shop to ensure you have something that isn't going to die within five years.