Use Cat6a for Link Aggregation?

[lukezon]

I have two Ethernet Switches in my home quite far away with a CAT6A cable running between them.  I need to upgrade both switches to accommodate more capacity and so was thinking that I should look into ones that support Link Aggregation.  This way I could get more bandwidth between the switches.  However, there is no way for me to run a second Ethernet cable beside the existing CAT6A cable.  Would it be possible for me to some how use two Ethernet Ports as Aggregates on both switches and then convert to the one cable (As CAT6A can support 10Gbps)?  If so what would I need to buy?

[Dujith]

Why not get a switch that has a 10Gbps port to make the link? I doubt there is anything besides an actual switch that could do what u want

[knightslugger]

8 minutes ago, lukezon said:

I have two Ethernet Switches in my home quite far away with a CAT6A cable running between them.  I need to upgrade both switches to accommodate more capacity and so was thinking that I should look into ones that support Link Aggregation.  This way I could get more bandwidth between the switches.  However, there is no way for me to run a second Ethernet cable beside the existing CAT6A cable.  Would it be possible for me to some how use two Ethernet Ports as Aggregates on both switches and then convert to the one cable (As CAT6A can support 10Gbps)?  If so what would I need to buy?

No, that's not how that works. how would you separate the combined signal through a port that only supports 1000Mbps?

 

You need a 10Gbps connection.

[Lurick]

No, it doesn't work like that. 1 link per cable. There is nothing to combine cables or anything of the sort.

You'll just have to deal with a single 1Gbps link or upgrade to something that can do Multi-Gig (2.5 and 5Gbps) or 10Gbps

[Oshino Shinobu]

5 minutes ago, Dujith said:

Why not get a switch that has a 10Gbps port to make the link? I doubt there is anything besides an actual switch that could do what u want

Because they're expensive as hell?

 

13 minutes ago, lukezon said:

I have two Ethernet Switches in my home quite far away with a CAT6A cable running between them.  I need to upgrade both switches to accommodate more capacity and so was thinking that I should look into ones that support Link Aggregation.  This way I could get more bandwidth between the switches.  However, there is no way for me to run a second Ethernet cable beside the existing CAT6A cable.  Would it be possible for me to some how use two Ethernet Ports as Aggregates on both switches and then convert to the one cable (As CAT6A can support 10Gbps)?  If so what would I need to buy?

AFAIK, it cannot be done. While the cable can provide enough bandwidth for 10Gbps, it's not like that's just a matter of sending a 1Gbps signal 10 times over, it is sent in a different manner in order to retain the same amount of latency. The switch would assume it was sending data over two cables, so it would likely end up with collisions as it tries to send different things at the same time over one cable, thinking it is two. 

 

EDIT: Analogy: Imagine a road that goes from two lanes to one. It would be like two cars trying to merge into the single lane at once. 

[Dujith]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

Because they're expensive as hell?

Nowhere was a budget specified  Also he is looking to replace them.

And i'm not talking about a full 10Gbps port switch. Just the link port with FPS+ 10GBASE-T

 

Having said that i also do not know the distance, so anything further away then 50 meters and you are screwed.

 

[lukezon]

Just now, Dujith said:

Nowhere was a budget specified  Also he is looking to replace them.

And i'm not talking about a full 10Gbps port switch. Just the link port with FPS+ 10GBASE-T

 

Having said that i also do not know the distance, so anything further away then 50 meters and you are screwed.

 

The cable is only going 100ft so I am good on that front.  Can you suggest any switches that would work for me?  I would need two of them so as cheap as possible would be good.

[knightslugger]

Just now, Dujith said:

Nowhere was a budget specified  Also he is looking to replace them.

And i'm not talking about a full 10Gbps port switch. Just the link port with FPS+ 10GBASE-T

 

Having said that i also do not know the distance, so anything further away then 50 meters and you are screwed.

 

well you just get lower link speed. anything over 2Gbps is better than what he's got planned now...

[Dujith]

Just now, lukezon said:

The cable is only going 100ft so I am good on that front.  Can you suggest any switches that would work for me?  I would need two of them so as cheap as possible would be good.

Budget? 

[lukezon]

Just now, Dujith said:

Budget? 

I would hope to keep it under $200 if possible.  But I am OK with going over that if necessary.

 

I am currently doing a whole restructuring of my network so I could make room in the budget.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, Dujith said:

Nowhere was a budget specified  Also he is looking to replace them.

And i'm not talking about a full 10Gbps port switch. Just the link port with FPS+ 10GBASE-T

 

Having said that i also do not know the distance, so anything further away then 50 meters and you are screwed.

 

FPS+? I assume SFP+?

 

Seeing as it's Cat 6A, if he does go for 10GbE he'd be able to do 100m. 

 

Hopefully Asus continues its push for (somewhat) affordable 10GbE. Their new 10GbE NICs are about $100, just wish they'd come out on the UK market. Hoping for them to bring out a sub $400 10GbE 8 port+ switch at some point. That, or an increased adoption of the 2.5GbE and 5GbE standards. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, lukezon said:

I would hope to keep it under $200 if possible.  But I am OK with going over that if necessary.

 

I am currently doing a whole restructuring of my network so I could make room in the budget.

At that point your best bet is probably to look at preowned business switches on eBay. Maybe Gigabit switches that have 10GbE or 10GBASE-T SFP+ uplinks to connect the switches together. 

[Dujith]

1 minute ago, lukezon said:

I would hope to keep it under $200 if possible.  But I am OK with going over that if necessary.

 

I am currently doing a whole restructuring of my network so I could make room in the budget.

 

Ouch, the module alone would set you back 150 Euro's

So back to the drawing board  

 

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

FPS+? I assume SFP+?

 

Seeing as it's Cat 6A, if he does go for 10GbE he'd be able to do 100m. 

 

Hopefully Asus continues its push for (somewhat) affordable 10GbE. Their new 10GbE NICs are about $100, just wish they'd come out on the UK market. Hoping for them to bring out a sub $400 10GbE 8 port+ switch at some point. That, or an increased adoption of the 2.5GbE and 5GbE standards. 

.....I am dumb  Yes SFP+ 

Distance wise i was talking about experience. Most of the times the cable will pick up interference and lowering that distance by quite alot. Only in a perfect setup would it always work sadly. Cat7 on the other hand, i had it wrapped around a 400V cable and still was perfect

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, Dujith said:

i had it wrapped around a 400V cable

I see you like to live dangerously

[lukezon]

2 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

At that point your best bet is probably to look at preowned business switches on eBay. Maybe Gigabit switches that have 10GbE or 10GBASE-T SFP+ uplinks to connect the switches together. 

 

1 minute ago, Dujith said:

 

Ouch, the module alone would set you back 150 Euro's

So back to the drawing board  

 

.....I am dumb  Yes SFP+ 

Distance wise i was talking about experience. Most of the times the cable will pick up interference and lowering that distance by quite alot. Only in a perfect setup would it always work sadly. Cat7 on the other hand, i had it wrapped around a 400V cable and still was perfect

Thank you both for your responses.  It seems like doing anything besides running a secondary cable would be a little out of my budget so I am going to leave it at 1Gb right now and maybe upgrade when the prices come down on the 10Gbps switches.

[Dujith]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

I see you like to live dangerously

More a collegae who didnt pay attention when he pulled the cable through the cable gutter and ended up on the other side where all the 3 fase cables are  

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, lukezon said:

 

Thank you both for your responses.  It seems like doing anything besides running a secondary cable would be a little out of my budget so I am going to leave it at 1Gb right now and maybe upgrade when the prices come down on the 10Gbps switches.

Yeah, 10Gbps stuff is still stupidly expensive. Direct connections between two end devices is now affordable thanks to Asus, but the switches are still pretty much all over $1K. 

[Minbari]

Used PE switches from a telco would be your best bet to find affordable 10G SFP gear. Finding wholesalers on eBay or liquidation sites would often bundle lots of SFP cables and switches/routers together. A used 7450 ESS or 7330 ISAM are able to be found cheap usually because they are at the end of life for telcos. Most of them are now required to support 100G to the backplane from the P router, which leads to affordability in finding the 10G gear in the consumer market. If full 10G would not be required, Cisco 3400 switches are known for reliability and an LAG could be constructed of basic 1G connections to create a LAG of ~10G or more. 

 

Best of luck

[ltguy]

On 8/11/2017 at 11:24 AM, Oshino Shinobu said:

Yeah, 10Gbps stuff is still stupidly expensive. Direct connections between two end devices is now affordable thanks to Asus, but the switches are still pretty much all over $1K. 

It depends, my tplink switch i got on Amazon for $250 has 4 SFP+ 10gb ports on it.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, ltguy said:

It depends, my tplink switch i got on Amazon for $250 has 4 SFP+ 10gb ports on it.

Ah, my bad on that one, was talking 10GbE rather than SFP+. 

[ltguy]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

Ah, my bad on that one, was talking 10GbE rather than SFP+. 

Yeah, thats why im sticking with SFP+ for now, both the switches and the network cards are much cheaper atm. Even if you can afford the 10GbE switch you have to buy the network cards to match and they ain't cheap.

[Oshino Shinobu]

5 minutes ago, ltguy said:

Yeah, thats why im sticking with SFP+ for now, both the switches and the network cards are much cheaper atm. Even if you can afford the 10GbE switch you have to buy the network cards to match and they ain't cheap.

Well, you can get Asus's new single port NIC for about $100. If switches come down a bit more in price, I'd say 10GbE will end up being worth the price premium over SFP+ just for convenience's sake. 

[ltguy]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

Well, you can get Asus's new single port NIC for about $100. If switches come down a bit more in price, I'd say 10GbE will end up being worth the price premium over SFP+ just for convenience's sake. 

I see your point, but isn't the future fiber? At what point to do we move away from copper and just wire our house with all fiber? Pretty soon gigabit internet will come to my area and they will run fiber right into my house. At the point, wouldnt it be more logical to just keep the whole lan fiber as well.

[Lurick]

4 minutes ago, ltguy said:

I see your point, but isn't the future fiber? At what point to do we move away from copper and just wire our house with all fiber? Pretty soon gigabit internet will come to my area and they will run fiber right into my house. At the point, wouldnt it be more logical to just keep the whole lan fiber as well.

If you're getting fiber from ATT, Verizon, or Google, they will convert the fiber to copper in the crawlspace and then it will be a copper run to the router. Not sure of any ISP that patches fiber directly into the router.

[Oshino Shinobu]

13 minutes ago, ltguy said:

I see your point, but isn't the future fiber? At what point to do we move away from copper and just wire our house with all fiber? Pretty soon gigabit internet will come to my area and they will run fiber right into my house. At the point, wouldnt it be more logical to just keep the whole lan fiber as well.

The issue I have currently with SFP+ and LAN fibre at the moment is the lack of universal standardisation. There's so many things that don't just work together, while Ethernet basically just works as long as it uses the same ports. 

 

Also, even with FTTP connections, the incoming connection to the router is very rarely fibre, it will be converted to copper at some point. When running cables in a house, it makes more sense to use copper as it's less fragile and can do tighter turns than fibre. Fibre cables are also much more expensive and the various differences in fibre types (in terms of cable, connector and cards) makes it difficult to understand what you need to buy without extensive research. 

 

Until LAN fibre becomes standardised to the point that ethernet currently is, I'd say it's too inconvenient for the majority of home use cases. I could afford to go for SFP+, but I'm holding off for 10GbE because it's just so much easier and would integrate seamlessly into the existing network.