10Gb Service, 500Mb equipment... Help with upgrade?

[Soid]

My local ISP just upgraded our service to what they claim 10 Gb/s (Only $30/mo!), but the router they provided (eero 6) tops out at 500 Mb/s, and the modem only has one port for direct ethernet connect (which is taken by the router). Of course, it's only marketing if I don't actually have a way to use those speeds.

 

I figured it'd be a straightforward affair to find different equipment to take best advantage of my new speeds, and quickly found myself bogged down with opaque product descriptions and a certain amount of my own ignorance. 

 

My mobo has 2.5 Gb/s ethernet built in, and I tested it directly and got those speeds... but I'd like to be able to test the max speed, so if anybody could recommend an affordable but good PCIe card, I'd like to try test their 10Gb/s claims, for the lulz. 

 

What I'm findings that WiFi routers can be relatively affordable for higher speeds within the network, but the ethernet ports are always limited to 1 Gb/s (if specified at all), so all of the absurd WiFi claims will all be bottlenecked at 1 Gb/s for internet connections.

 

I work remotely, we don't have a ton of devices (2 computers and one NAS), but my wife and I often have to transfer fairly large files off site, so we'd enjoy a router with higher throughput. As far as I can tell, if I want something that's 10 Gb/s, I'm going to be paying out the nose.... but I honestly don't really know how to shop correctly for all of this. I figure I only need a router to connect to the modem at 10 Gb/s, and to switch for 4 devices on my LAN at 2.5 Gb/s per device (2 PCs, 1 NAS, 1 wifi router), and then a separate wifi router I guess. 

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

[LIGISTX]

16 minutes ago, Soid said:

My local ISP just upgraded our service to what they claim 10 Gb/s (Only $30/mo!), but the router they provided (eero 6) tops out at 500 Mb/s, and the modem only has one port for direct ethernet connect (which is taken by the router). Of course, it's only marketing if I don't actually have a way to use those speeds.

 

I figured it'd be a straightforward affair to find different equipment to take best advantage of my new speeds, and quickly found myself bogged down with opaque product descriptions and a certain amount of my own ignorance. 

 

My mobo has 2.5 Gb/s ethernet built in, and I tested it directly and got those speeds... but I'd like to be able to test the max speed, so if anybody could recommend an affordable but good PCIe card, I'd like to try test their 10Gb/s claims, for the lulz. 

 

What I'm findings that WiFi routers can be relatively affordable for higher speeds within the network, but the ethernet ports are always limited to 1 Gb/s (if specified at all), so all of the absurd WiFi claims will all be bottlenecked at 1 Gb/s for internet connections.

 

I work remotely, we don't have a ton of devices (2 computers and one NAS), but my wife and I often have to transfer fairly large files off site, so we'd enjoy a router with higher throughput. As far as I can tell, if I want something that's 10 Gb/s, I'm going to be paying out the nose.... but I honestly don't really know how to shop correctly for all of this. I figure I only need a router to connect to the modem at 10 Gb/s, and to switch for 4 devices on my LAN at 2.5 Gb/s per device (2 PCs, 1 NAS, 1 wifi router), and then a separate wifi router I guess. 

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

There isn’t really any consumer gear they can do 10gigabit. As you said, you would pay out the nose. And that is also getting into the realm of “you really don’t need that for a home connection”. A harddrive can only write at ~150 MBps, which is 1.2 gigabit. A SATA SAD can read and write at about ~500 MBps (sequentially…. Not many things are actually sequential), and that is not even 10 gigabit. 10 gigabit is 1.25 GB/s, you would need NVMe drives, or a wide RAID array to even read and write data that fast, just to put this into perspective. 
 

2.5 gigabit is sort of becoming a new joke user standard, which is more in line with consumer hardware… but it’s more just so you can have multiple devices doing full gigabit to and from the internet on your LAN, not really so a single device can do 2.5.

[Soid]

Your response is kind of what I expected. My PC has 5,650 MB/s (write) NVMe drives, so maybe I could take advantage of it? if steam lets me download that fast. So yeah, I guess I really just wanted to be able to see that big number when I'm doing speedtest. IT'd still be fun to throw a 10 Gb network card just to run the speedtest and check the ISP's claims, even if there's not practical use.

 

I'm looking at this router for my actual needs, and return the ISP provided eero. Save the rental cost. My house isn't big, so I don't really need a mesh system to get full coverage. 

[Sjaakie]

Usually ebay / used market is great for used enterprise 10 GBe pcie cards at decent prices.

 

For a router / switch I'd look into the UDM Pro. It has 2 SFP+ slots, you can use one for a 10 Gb RJ45 module to connect to the modem / wan, and one for a lan connection. So you'd have one 10 Gb device to connect, or you'd need a downline 10 Gb / 2.5 Gb switch to connect more devices at high speed.

 

And indeed for Wifi you'd need an access point.

 

It's not cheap but maybe not as expensive as you'd expect. UDM Pro is around €400,- where I'm from. Including basic 10 Gb switch and decent AP i guess around €900,- total. And then add your 10 gbe pcie cards and cat 6a / 7 cabling.

 

For testing / trying out it's certainly a lot / too much of money but if you have a use case / business case for it I guess it's ok.

[Alex Atkin UK]

50 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

A harddrive can only write at ~150 MBps, which is 1.2 gigabit. A SATA SAD can read and write at about ~500 MBps (sequentially…. Not many things are actually sequential), and that is not even 10 gigabit. 10 gigabit is 1.25 GB/s, you would need NVMe drives, or a wide RAID array to even read and write data that fast, just to put this into perspective. 
 

2.5 gigabit is sort of becoming a new joke user standard, which is more in line with consumer hardware… but it’s more just so you can have multiple devices doing full gigabit to and from the internet on your LAN, not really so a single device can do 2.5.

Modern HDDs can do faster than that actually, but otherwise correct.

 

Also while technically correct about 2.5Gbit, I must point out that it IS possible to get over Gigabit on some services.  I've done downloads on Steam at 180MB/s by load balancing between Fibre and 5G, I suspect it could do more.

 

Although 10Gbit definitely isn't intended for a single client to max it out, the point is so you never do, which means no bufferbloat and latency issues, even when heavily downloading/uploading.

[Soid]

So, revisiting this.  I purchased the TP-Link AX3000 router, which claims 2402 Mb/s on the 5 Ghz band, and it has a 2.5 Gb/s WAN port...  But I was only about to get 700 down and 200 up (I may the MSI Z690-A WiFi motherboard, which has WiFi 6E).  I don't really understand why I got speeds far under what it advertises... with my old ISP's router/modem I was able to reliably pull 1 Gb/s up/down on WiFi. I test the ISP connection and was able to verify at least 2 Gb/s up/down wired directly to the modem (I got a 10 Gb/s network card, but haven't gotten around to testing it yet). I'm super annoyed. 

 

Would this be a configuration issue? Or is it just that the claimed 2402 Mb/s cannot occur on one device? I don't really get it.  I've gotten used to Gb/s speeds, so I'd at least like to be able to do that.

What spec should I be looking for to make sure I get the performance I want?

 

Thanks...

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, Soid said:

Would this be a configuration issue? Or is it just that the claimed 2402 Mb/s cannot occur on one device? I don't really get it.  I've gotten used to Gb/s speeds, so I'd at least like to be able to do that.

The 2.4Gbit claim is for WiFi alone, in ideal circumstances, with a client that exactly matches (or exceeds) the routers number of MIMO chains, channel width and WiFi version it supports.  The speed it can handle for the Internet (NAT throughput) is different and rarely advertised.

 

It looks like the eero Pro 6E is supposed to handle 2.3Gbit, the eero 6 close to Gigabit.

[Soid]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

The 2.4Gbit claim is for WiFi alone, in ideal circumstances, with a client that exactly matches (or exceeds) the routers number of MIMO chains, channel width and WiFi version it supports.  The speed it can handle for the Internet (NAT throughput) is different and rarely advertised.

 

It looks like the eero Pro 6E is supposed to handle 2.3Gbit, the eero 6 close to Gigabit.

 

It's annoying that they don't advertise NAT throughput, since that's what most people who are purchasing a consumer WiFi router care about. 

 

My ISP provided the EeRO 6, which gives me up/down 500 Mb/s as advertised, so I think I can probably trust the Pro 6E to do the 1.3 Gb/s WiFi speed they claim.  I found a decent deal for one on Ebay, so I'll try out the 6E, and if it works like I hope I can stop renting the ISP's. I was hope to stay away from the Eero, just because I don't need another amazon company in my house... but it seems like the other options out there in my price range will run into the same issues. 

 

Thanks. Much later down the road I might give Sjaakie's suggestion a try, and set up a UniFi network, but I don't think I'm there yet

[Soid]

So, I found a used Asus PEB 10G/57811 card, and popped it in my computer and installed drivers. Connected the PC directly to the modem with a 15' (according to amazon) Cat7 cable. I had to poke around a lot of different test servers, but this was the best I was able to get:

 

 

I'm sure there's probably more I could do to get the speeds up, but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't able to reach near the 10Gb/s speeds my ISP advertises, but oh well. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, Soid said:

So, I found a used Asus PEB 10G/57811 card, and popped it in my computer and installed drivers. Connected the PC directly to the modem with a 15' (according to amazon) Cat7 cable. I had to poke around a lot of different test servers, but this was the best I was able to get:

 

 

I'm sure there's probably more I could do to get the speeds up, but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't able to reach near the 10Gb/s speeds my ISP advertises, but oh well. 

You'll be limited by the speedtest server, a lot them only have 10Gbit in total so the odds of testing at full speed is near impossible.

 

The point of 10Gbit is for multiple clients to get a good speed at the same time.  A download off Steam might be the best chance of testing how fast it can go, but even there it can depend per game.

 

Also bear in mind most, if not all, 10Gbit fibre is shared amongst every house on the same fibre and that could be 32 or 128 properties, it depends how the telco rolled out the fibre.  Its the only way they can offer it at that price.

[Soid]

11 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

You'll be limited by the speedtest server, a lot them only have 10Gbit in total so the odds of testing at full speed is near impossible.

 

The point of 10Gbit is for multiple clients to get a good speed at the same time.  A download off Steam might be the best chance of testing how fast it can go, but even there it can depend per game.

 

Also bear in mind most, if not all, 10Gbit fibre is shared amongst every house on the same fibre and that could be 32 or 128 properties, it depends how the telco rolled out the fibre.  Its the only way they can offer it at that price.

 

Makes sense. My speed test results varied wildly, depending on the server.

 

It's been an interesting learning experience for me. At $30 / mo for the connection, I really can't complain. 3.3 Gb/s symmetrical is still crazy fast for any consumer use. The big guys charge far more for far less.

 

It's from a locally owned, relatively small, telecom (Sonic, headquartered in San Jose, California). They used to resell connections to the AT&T network at a pretty decent discount, and later leveraged their subscriber base to recently rolled out their own fiber infrastructure to compete with comcast and AT&T. I hope others are able to copy their business model in the US and introduce more competition. 

 

Thanks for the input 

[LIGISTX]

3 hours ago, Soid said:

It's from a locally owned, relatively small, telecom (Sonic, headquartered in San Jose, California). They used to resell connections to the AT&T network at a pretty decent discount, and later leveraged their subscriber base to recently rolled out their own fiber infrastructure to compete with comcast and AT&T. I hope others are able to copy their business model in the US and introduce more competition. 

That’s awesome! I wish I could get even just gigabit symmetric. Hell, I’d love 500 symmetric. To bad the ISP’s own their transmission lines and rights to the ground they run in as far as I understand. It’s hard to become a new ISP. 

[Soid]

I have some insight on how some of that works in my area (US, California). I a civil engineer in a public works department, so I deal with utilities a lot. 

 

Often, utilities are run in the road right of way, which is usually owned by the local government and they're given an easement to occupy the space. Even when it's off of government property, the utilities typically don't own the land they occupy, they just have an easement on the private property.

 

Where utilities are run above ground on poles, the poles are usually owned by the power company, who will enter into pole sharing agreements with other utilities like phone, cable, and internet. In the case of my ISP, it was pretty easy for them to run fiber lines, since they were able to just hang them on the power company's poles. I was able to watch their deployment and it went remarkably fast (a few dozen workers around the neighborhood for a couple of days). So in neighborhoods with above ground utilities, it could be relatively affordable for an ISP to deploy new lines.

 

When the utilities are underground, a company will dig their own trench within the road right of way, and each have their own easement with the road owner. Going underground is a lot, lot more expensive, and probably wouldn't be doable in the startup phase unless they were able to implement them into a new development during the initial construction phase. 

 

One of the big challenges in the US is that the big companies are very interested in maintaining their monopolies. They will lobby for policies that lock potential startups or government owned ISPs from entering the market.