10gb data link to select stations.

safety12 · April 2, 2015

I work in a small-mid-size company in their IT department.

What we are trying to do is upgrade about 30-40(order entry) user out of our 250+ user to utilize 10gb speed.

We currently have cat 5e cable to each station. All running 1Gbps

Our current 4x48 port switches are cable of handling 10gbe speeds. My question is what exactly would we need to upgrade all of these stations and what will be need to be done and purchased.

Some of my initial thoughts was to run a new cat 6a cable to each work station but I was wondering if its beneficial to run just one cat 6 cable to that location and purchase a 10port 10gbe unmanaged switch and split it off from there to each work station. Would need to buy 5 switches since its for 5 departments which vary from 3-8 user each.

Yes, I know the less things between the main switch to work station the better but seeing as it'll be about 30-40 runs it will be very time consuming(coming in on Saturdays would also be involved).We are trying to have this up and running by end of April.

Please let me know your thoughts.

dzonidev · April 2, 2015

Alright, first things first. Your switches may have a 10G uplink as an SFP+ port or a standalone ethernet port. But I doubt your 48 port switches are 10G capable across all ports. The may be able to withstand accumulation of such speeds.

Anyways, work stations need to be 10G capable as well. If they are not capable, then you need PCI-E cards, and the cheapest I've seen them go for is around $250 per card. Next the cable, CAT 6 is 10G capable but only to a certain lenght meaning you will need CAT 6a or 7 to run it from the rack across the office.

Last, switches the only brand I know that make big ethernet based 10G switches is Huawei and CISCO maybe DCN. They have a 48x10G Base-T and in retail it's around $5000, carrier grade of course.

So you are looking at an investment of around $10000. Spreading switches over the office may be cheaper/faster however it will be a pain to manage.

And all this is great, until you come to the question do you really need it? I mean 10G is 1000MB/s read/write speeds, and the only way you can achieve this is with a really expensive m.2 SSD or a RAID array.

If network storage is one of the reasons, well let's say 5 people are accessing it simultaneously, over a 10G link. For 5 simultaneous transfers you can get maybe 3-4Gbps per client. If you want more you need to setup link aggregation.

Broseephus · April 2, 2015

@safety12

I would advise you spend some time re-evaluating your orgs needs. dzonidev nailed the big picture but his estimated investment of $10k seems very low.

The cheapest way off the top of my head is buying a 10G high density switch (for example the Cisco 4900m is a 48 port switch but only 24 are actually 10G) and then doing individual cable runs (between 100-200 per run) to each individual station which has an aftermarket 10G card (probably around 200 each)

You're easily looking at $30K+ (honestly this is an extremely conservative estimate) if you're able to find a good deal on some high density 10G switches, AND this is assuming you're capable of setting all this up yourself which, judging by the questions you're asking, I don't think it's a good idea for you take this project on by yourself.

My advice is to call a Cisco Partner https://tools.cisco.com/WWChannels/LOCATR/openBasicSearch.doin your area and see what they can do to help you out. Using a Cisco Partner won't be the cheapest but with the price this project is going to cost anyway it would be worth spending for professional help and making sure it's done right.

Much better to spend 50k on a completed network then 30k on a mistake.

My instinct is telling me someone saw that 10G is a thing and they think that upgrading these users is going to instantly make things 10x faster across the board.

In most major enterprises 10G is still only being utilized on uplink ports between switches.

I'm not trying to come off as a dick if that's how my paragraph reads but there's some serious research that needs to be done by your org. That research needs to come from outside of LTT.

Edit... I just re-read the original post. It seems you have some 48 port switches that you believe are 10G capable. Post up the exact make/model.

dzonidev · April 3, 2015

@safety12

I would advise you spend some time re-evaluating your orgs needs. dzonidev nailed the big picture but his estimated investment of $10k seems very low.

The cheapest way off the top of my head is buying a 10G high density switch (for example the Cisco 4900m is a 48 port switch but only 24 are actually 10G) and then doing individual cable runs (between 100-200 per run) to each individual station which has an aftermarket 10G card (probably around 200 each)

You're easily looking at $30K+ (honestly this is an extremely conservative estimate) if you're able to find a good deal on some high density 10G switches, AND this is assuming you're capable of setting all this up yourself which, judging by the questions you're asking, I don't think it's a good idea for you take this project on by yourself.

My advice is to call a Cisco Partner https://tools.cisco.com/WWChannels/LOCATR/openBasicSearch.doin your area and see what they can do to help you out. Using a Cisco Partner won't be the cheapest but with the price this project is going to cost anyway it would be worth spending for professional help and making sure it's done right.

Much better to spend 50k on a completed network then 30k on a mistake.

My instinct is telling me someone saw that 10G is a thing and they think that upgrading these users is going to instantly make things 10x faster across the board.

In most major enterprises 10G is still only being utilized on uplink ports between switches.

I'm not trying to come off as a dick if that's how my paragraph reads but there's some serious research that needs to be done by your org. That research needs to come from outside of LTT.

Edit... I just re-read the original post. It seems you have some 48 port switches that you believe are 10G capable. Post up the exact make/model.

I agree 100%, I did ax the investment thing. And also, I must add it's strange that a sys admin is asking for help on a forum for what he should essentially know best.

Unless you're not the sys admin in that case sorry.