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    2.5gb unmanaged switch without EEE(Energy Efficient Ethernet) suggestions please and also questions!

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    • S Offline
      Spossis83
      last edited by

      As the title states, I am trying my hardest to locate a 2.5gb 5-8 port Unmanaged switch that does not have EEE or has a button to disable it. I don't want it running on my network and causing latency, I have had some issues with it causing dropouts before, and just want to avoid it.

      I also do not know if I can just disable it at the router level in the bios or pfsense+? If so would that disable it for the rest of the network or would an EEE switch still interfere?

      Thanks in advance.

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      • stephenw10S Online
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        In igc it's disabled by default in pfSense. There's a tunable to enable it. I will point out that the global tunable is labelled incorrectly, this is disabled:

        [23.05-BETA][root@6100-2.stevew.lan]/root: sysctl -d hw.igc.eee_setting
        hw.igc.eee_setting: Enable Energy Efficient Ethernet
        [23.05-BETA][root@6100-2.stevew.lan]/root: sysctl hw.igc.eee_setting
        hw.igc.eee_setting: 1
        [23.05-BETA][root@6100-2.stevew.lan]/root: sysctl -d dev.igc.0.eee_control
        dev.igc.0.eee_control: Disable Energy Efficient Ethernet
        [23.05-BETA][root@6100-2.stevew.lan]/root: sysctl dev.igc.0.eee_control
        dev.igc.0.eee_control: 1
        
        S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • S Offline
          Spossis83 @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10 so if I disable it in the router/pfsense software, will an unmanaged switch having EEE enabled still affect the network (since you can't manage the switch to turn it off), or will disabling it make it not possible for the switch to do it? à la it needs to be enabled in the full network chain to work, or it won't?

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          • J Offline
            JimBob Indiana
            last edited by

            Sadly affordable 2.5gb switches that are “managed” are still too pricey.

            S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • S Offline
              Spossis83 @JimBob Indiana
              last edited by

              @jimbob-indiana yea that's why I was hoping to go with an unmanaged, since I don't really need VLAN's I can just create physical LANs if I need more, if not just using an unmanaged switch would be useful. I just wanted to know if it having EEE would be detrimental, or if disabling EEE in the router would basically disable it down the line, through a sort of having a requirement disabled so the feature is disabled by proxy. Like having 4G Encoding turned off in a bios, forces a gpu to not be able to use resizable bar/Smart Access Memory. If a feature it needs isn't enabled, it just can't enable itself.

              J 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • stephenw10S Online
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                As far as I know EEE is negotiated on a link that supports it. So that if one side stops advertising it it cannot be enabled.

                S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • J Offline
                  JimBob Indiana @Spossis83
                  last edited by JimBob Indiana

                  @spossis83 I can tell you without hesitation that I’ve messed with all that stuff. No discernible difference for end users.

                  Obviously I’m telling you it isn’t worth it however if you search on PFSense tweaks, BSD14 tweaks, you’ll find endless options for configurations.

                  I also looked for simple “managed” kind of switch. I have several 1gb switches that do. Can find them a plenty at 1gb. None at 2.5gb. At least I couldn’t find any.

                  It seems to me the core software that is used on the “managed” switches could be ported over to the 2.5gb.

                  S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • S Offline
                    Spossis83 @stephenw10
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10 so if I disable it on all the ports in the router, it couldn't work down the line, since it isn't being enabled through the full link? If I understand that right, then good enough for me :) Thank you!

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                    • stephenw10S Online
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by

                      It's a layer 1 feature. It works between two devices on a single Ethernet link, so a NIC connected to a switch. Disabling it on the NIC would prevent it working there but would make no difference to a link from the switch to router or any other links the traffic may be using.

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                      • S Offline
                        Spossis83 @JimBob Indiana
                        last edited by

                        @jimbob-indiana Thanks! I know there are tons of tweaks, I basically just want to ensure the lowest latency possible without connection drops. Anything beyond that would be gravy haha.

                        Dobby_D 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • Dobby_D Offline
                          Dobby_ @Spossis83
                          last edited by Dobby_

                          @spossis83

                          • Qnap QSW-1105-5T
                            5 Port 2,5 Gbps Auto Negotiation (2,5 G/1 G/100 M)
                            Unmanaged Switch for around ~89 € (Amazon.de)

                          • NETGEAR MS305
                            5 Port Switch Multi-Gigabit Ethernet (5X 1G/2,5G)
                            Unmanaged Switch for around ~150 € (Amazon.de)

                          • NETGEAR MS105
                            5 Port Multi-Gigabit 2,5G Ethernet
                            Unmanaged Switch for around ~165 € (Galaxus.de)

                          All three are unmanaged, with 5x 2.5 GBit/s ports and
                          from under 100 € to under 200 € available.

                          #~. @Dobby

                          Turris Omnia - 4 Ports - 2 GB RAM / TurrisOS 7 Release (Btrfs)
                          PC Engines APU4D4 - 4 Ports - 4 GB RAM / pfSense CE 2.7.2 Release (ZFS)
                          PC Engines APU6B4 - 4 Ports - 4 GB RAM / pfSense+ (Plus) 24.03_1 Release (ZFS)

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