Please recommend managed switch for home use?
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LAG, LACP, Etherchannel, Portchannel.. Doesn't matter what you call it..
To leverage the fatter pipe you created the devices involved have to be smart enough to spread the traffic across the aggregation.
You have clients on 1 side of switch, server on the other. Which interface does switch see the syn on, which path does he send that to the server on? The hash used to determine the path is what is going to determine if you can leverage your extra bandwidth and how much of it you do.
How many servers how many clients.. Your 1 client is never going to see more than 1 gig to that server no matter how many paths you aggregate together.. Now if you have lots of clients all talking to the server at the same time, then ok.. Server will be able to push out more than its 1 gig if his other stuff can handle it, cpu, nics, disks, etc..
My point is in a home this rarely makes sense - your burning ports that many homes do not have, and your not going to see any performance increase. And now you have a way more complex setup. If your running a server for your dorm or something, or you have a bunch of people in this house all using the same server with fast pipes.. Ok.. How many clients are there? What exactly are you doing - sorry but streaming even 4k does not require that gig pipe.. You can serve up lots of clients over the 1 gig connection. Are you moving files back and forth to this server were more than 1 gig makes sense? Ok then - prob time to move to 10ge on that server..
That is my 2 cents on the subject.
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The only conceivable way to utilize LACP on a small home network as I understand it would be to allow more than one user to utilize a NAS at full speed (or less speed penalty if >2 simultaneous users) simultaneously if the NAS is also configured LACP.
Correct.
whether that is of any value to you depends on how you utilize your NAS, I would imagine the vast majority of home setups wouldn't benefit appreciably.
Being a member of a NAS forum that different from this forum is populated by far more normal users than geeks or professionals, I notice the main usage for home NASes being storing and streaming of multimedia and as backup destination. More and more also use it as storage for some constantly writing surveillance cameras (at least full HD today).
In a home with more than 1 person, especially when there's also kids around, there will on evenings easily be several concurrent clients of a home NAS and with 1 active computer, 2 hi-res media streams to smart TVs and/or tablets and two surveillance cameras, single gigabit NAS connections will at times be a bottleneck.
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I'm not knocking setting up an LACP on your home network - I have an LACP on my home network (that I don't need).
I'm just pointing out that it is probably not going to be a significant improvement on a home network.
I tihnk most home networks can find times where an LACP prevents a bottleneck that would otherwise be there. i.e., the above home NAS setup with a few users trying to transfer files at the same time. The LACP may well allow three users to DL @ ~600Mbps instead of ~300Mbps, but 300Mbps is still moving a gig every 30 seconds. So while yes it can be a speed improvement on home networks, not many home networks will see an appreciable time savings over time. But then again most of us do a whole lot of things on pfSense that we don't need on our home networks haha, so have fun!
One home network scenario that probably could benefit a lot from LACP would be a network that does a lot of work with video editing via a NAS. That stuff, especially high resolutions before compression can really suck down some bandwidth. If you are regularly transferring 20-30GB+ files around, an LACP could really help keep your transfer speeds up without tanking the LAN for everyone else.
There is something to be said for cost with LACP too. In the above video editing example you can improve network speeds with a few more GbE ports (cheap) and a couple of Cat5-6 patch cables.
Upgrading to 10GbE, while certainly a faster/better solution requires you to buy at a minimum 1-2x 2-port 10GbE NIC's, plus a 10GbE switch - not cheap! -
"single gigabit NAS connections will at times be a bottleneck."
Doubt it to be honest.. For starters I agree with you multiple devices in a home - most of which are Wireless!!! So these devices are not even capable of gig.. 2 hi-res streams.. Ok - how much bandwidth is that??
4K is what 15Mbps, to 20.. Netflix I think says preferred 25.. Not so much that is what it uses. More that what your pipe is so you can do other stuff in on the net in the background.. What content are you streaming that 1 gig can not handle 2 streams with plenty of room to spare.. Lets call it 50Mbps per stream… Still leaves you with about 800mbps when we call out the actual real world 900mbps you will see on that gig wire..
So unless your moving LARGE files.. filling up the pipe with a backup from some machine that can saturate the pipe for long time.. like TB of data being moved.. if you are moving TB of data to your NAS.. My guess is that would be taxing the thing more and causing any sort of slow downs vs your gig pipe being a issue.
What disks are in your NAS.. Running SSDs in a raid 0? ;) What can the disks do sustained across the wire?
"If you are regularly transferring 20-30GB+ files around, an LACP could really help keep your transfer speeds up without tanking the LAN for everyone else. "
If you are doing this from multiple devices all the time Then ok gig might be an issue, if your nas can actually push/pull what your gig pipe can move and your nas is not the bottle neck.. But you need multiple clients doing this all at the same time, and over a wire not wireless to start to stress your gig pipe where it becomes your bottleneck and you could leverage lag or moving to 10ge..
10ge can be done on the cheap quite often.. Connect your nas to your switch with fiber and an sfp+ in your switch.. Depending on your switch 10ge sfps can be dirt cheap, and a fiber connection for your nas shouldn't be all that expensive either..
Ubiquiti UniFi 10G MM Fiber SFP Module 850nm LC UF-MM-10G (2-Pack)
I see for 40$..Can you not then pick up say a Mellanox Connectx-2 card and then all you need is the fiber and your nas is connected at 10ge to your switch to serve up multiple 1 gig clients at full wire speed. Pretty sure those Mellanox nics will take almost any sfp+
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I have 2 of Netgear GS108Ev3 in my network. While they are performing their job pretty good I noticed slow management web interface responce or even seen some web pages corrupted. I noticed people here mentioned GS108Tv2 - are they any better?
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For starters I agree with you multiple devices in a home - most of which are Wireless!!!
Smart TVs and media players are more and more connected by wire and the wireless clients are ac.
So unless your moving LARGE files.. filling up the pipe with a backup from some machine that can saturate the pipe for long time..
That's exactly what NAS users do. Typically there's one computer using a full gigabit in larger bursts when doing backups and moving media files. When that hits the streaming, complaints are heard from other parts of the house. That's when NAS users come to the forum asking about LAGs.
What disks are in your NAS..
My home isn't typical as we rarely stream anything but Flac audio for longer times and we don't have any 4k-capable clients yet but I have 4 disks in RAID 5. Those that store video content often have more than 4 disks in RAID.
What can the disks do sustained across the wire?
Sequential access like streaming and backups is easily 2*gigabit both read and write on a 4-bay home NAS with low cost mechanical disks.
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I appreciate all the knowledge everyone has and has been sharing, but now you're all just bickering. lol and totally playing the do what I say; not what I do.
you're all saying no one here needs LAG…but then you have it implemented on your network... Remember we are all here because basic and just good enough is not an option for us...thus why we're building extreme machines just for routing data packets.
I for one will be setting up a LAG connection to my future UnRaid server, even though it's just me and soon to be one more using it. Simply because I can and have an extra quad port nic sitting around. I've never done it and would like to dink around with it and learn. and use it that way till I have 10gb all around.
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10ge can be done on the cheap quite often.. Connect your nas to your switch with fiber and an sfp+ in your switch.. Depending on your switch 10ge sfps can be dirt cheap, and a fiber connection for your nas shouldn't be all that expensive either..
It's not the server side that's the problem. There are plenty of 10 GbE NASes, even affordable, around and the geeky NAS users already have them.
It's the €250 and upwards to have the 10 GbE switch ports that's out of reach. With one or two 10 GbE port (preferably copper as optical is unknown and scary) in €100 switches available in consumer channels, 10 GbE will take off big and LACP will be history (at least until 10 GbE becomes the bottleneck ;)). I'm waiting and hoping as LAGs are often misunderstood and misconfigured by home users.
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What disks are in your NAS.. Running SSDs in a raid 0? ;) What can the disks do sustained across the wire?
…if your nas can actually push/pull what your gig pipe can move and your nas is not the bottle neck..
Why are you thinking that a NAS would be a speed bottle neck?
Even one slow HDD will saturate GbE. Case in point, one of the high reliability/low cost HDD's from blackblaze last year was the ST4000DM000 (4TB, 5900RPM, ~$100) so that's probably a pretty common drive in a home NAS that is not speed oriented.
So putting 4 of those in a raidz2/raid6 NAS, which is not a fast choice for raid (1xwrite, 2xread) gives you an average throughput of ~1.2Gbps write, ~2.3Gbps read.
Keep in mind those are slow HDDs, at average (not max) speeds, in a slow raid configuration, with a relatively low number of disks.So you can certainly saturate GbE with a home NAS, no problem.
Cost is still significantly lower for LACP than 10GbE in most cases.
The cost of LACP if you don't already have the ports available in your existing hardware (I did w/ a quad port NIC + 8 port switch and still have spares), is just the cost increase to buy components with a couple more ports than you were originally planning on, probably $20-30 more total.
If you are purchasing all new hardware to implement LACP, then yeah it's probably worth it to just pay a bit more for 10GbE. -
I appreciate all the knowledge everyone has and has been sharing, but now you're all just bickering. lol and totally playing the do what I say; not what I do.
you're all saying no one here needs LAG…but then you have it implemented on your network... Remember we are all here because basic and just good enough is not an option for us...thus why we're building extreme machines just for routing data packets.
I for one will be setting up a LAG connection to my future UnRaid server, even though it's just me and soon to be one more using it. Simply because I can and have an extra quad port nic sitting around. I've never done it and would like to dink around with it and learn. and use it that way till I have 10gb all around.
Yeah kind of the point is, you probably won't notice big improvements using LACP but if you want to implement one then please do so and forum users will be here to help if you need it.
building extreme machines just for routing data packets.
This is (IMO) another problem on pfSense that's caused by forum members recommending silly hardware for people getting into pfSense. It's pretty common to see someone with a 100/10 line get recommended to buy a modern i3, when a celeron or legacy eBay i3 would be more than capable - plenty of times people recommend buying a new $400 machine vs an old $80 machine citing the cost of electricity :o.
So your receiving warnings about LACP is just to give you realistic expectations, not to deter you.
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building extreme machines just for routing data packets.
This is (IMO) another problem on pfSense that's caused by forum members recommending silly hardware for people getting into pfSense. It's pretty common to see someone with a 100/10 line get recommended to buy a modern i3, when a celeron or legacy eBay i3 would be more than capable - plenty of times people recommend buying a new $400 machine vs an old $80 machine citing the cost of electricity :o.
Yeah I only have a 60/5 connection and use an old pentium e5300 (typical power use for entire system around 35w) haven't seen it go over 10% yet, but besides having 15 web tabs open in chrome I don't do much network multitasking at the same time. like if im playing a game, i can't listen to music or watch a movie on the side. it disrupts me too much. …but I did just ebay an old hp core i3 3220. may end up using that for pfsense after I mess with unraid on it first.
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I personally think its only base on the different needs, budgets and demanding's of us all at home.
I have not Netflix, Amazone Fire or AppleTV, I have EntertainTV Plus (PayTV over IP or Internet) from my ISP
and there are two receivers for that, and my demands are getting a Switch that is able to offer IGMPv3 proxy
or something that is capable of RIP (Routing), so the SG350-10 or a MikroTik Router is here the right think.And if that switch is really nice, with an intuitive WebGui, CLI and a serial console port why should I not
recommend that to others? Is $100 and perhaps $57 on top of this so far away from the 210 Euro?On top of this I have a small E3 Server and a NAS, both are able to be sorted with 10 GBit/s card or ports and the smallest
and cheapest Layer3 switch with Web interface, CLI and Serial port is here for me the D-Link DGS1510-20, not a rocket,
but with enough ports for me and all of my equipment. And no more freezing the firewall because I do a backup of PCs
or other devices. It it was able to realize with one single switch I was going that way for sure!If this switches are all right, nice playing and with an optimal intuitive Webinterface, what you all thinking I will guess others?
The thread opener was talking about $100 and is it worth the $57 for a newer model (v2), that are $157 plus shipping fee!So I was personally thinking that I am not really hard away from that by something that is ~$50 on top of this. I mean for
sure is $40 much money, with no question about it.I have 2 of Netgear GS108Ev3 in my network. While they are performing their job pretty good I noticed slow
management web interface responce or even seen some web pages corrupted. I noticed people here mentioned
GS108Tv2 - are they any better?The GS108Tv2 comes with VLAN, LAG support and is able to get his electric power over Ethernet nothing more.
Coming to the LAG, in some companies if let us say a new firmware is rolled out, many customers have questions
to that new function or that new option. If they all mail or call in, the supporter crew is targeting the file server
where all the documents are placed in, and then, for a small moment, temporally the network load to that server
will instant is grow up. This is in my eyes a real concern for using a LAG, if one line is saturated the next one gets
in the game play and so on. For that link aggregation that the most home users will be thinking or hoping to get
a real benefit from, is in my eyes the static LAG without LACP, correct me please if I am wrong with that.If I set up a static LAG with one Line for being Rx and one Line for being Tx, active/active and with Weighted RoundRobin
or only RoundRobin both line are from the beginning in complete in usage and will be full filled step by step, not waiting until
one is failing or gets saturated by the entire network load. This will be bringing the effect the most users will see or are imagine. -
This is (IMO) another problem on pfSense that's caused by forum members recommending silly hardware for people getting into pfSense. It's pretty common to see someone with a 100/10 line get recommended to buy a modern i3, when a celeron or legacy eBay i3 would be more than capable - plenty of times people recommend buying a new $400 machine vs an old $80 machine citing the cost of electricity
APU2C4 bundle will be for ~200 - 250 Euro depending on the mSATA size and an internal WiFi option.
Jetway NF9HG-2930 will be for ~350 Euro and able to route nearly 1 GBit/s without PPPoE with many packets installed
But they are saving much electrical power against the "old PC in the corner".The other point is, that they often starting in two directions;
1. "I have 100/10 Internet account but perhaps in the near future 1 GBit/s over Google fibre here and it must be future proof"
Hell, what to say to someone that will be build a future proof firewall for 1 GBit/s? If they reach only 940 MBit/s that is plus
overhead nearly 1 real GBit/s they are complaining mostly! So what is now a good tip for them???
2. "I need massively VPN and want to install Squid & SquidGuard, pfBlockerNG & DNSBL plus TDL, IDS/IPS and and and and….."
What is a commercial UTM device cost at the moment? Able to get for $80? Able to get out nearly the speed offered by the ISP
after proxy, AVScan, firewall rules, IDS inspection and more and more and more…... Please have a look on the well known vendors
website and have a quick view over the throughput what is served after the AV and IDS inspection! And then please look at the priceMany users and customers, only my own opinion, are comparing their home router for 200 Euro often with full featured UTM device
and because the home router was delivering them nearly 100% of the Internet connection speed, the (nearly) UTM device must realize
this now also for 200 Euros. And this will be in my opinion a thinking false or trap they are often in. -
I have HP 1820-8G & -24G at home. Newer & Cheaper than 1810
They behave nicely, have "lifelong warranty" , are fanless , but most important gets updates 2..3 times a year.
They are quite basic (no .1X or ACL's) but very reliable , SNMP is RO thoughI use Linksys 308' switches where a HP 1U unit wouldn't fit.
/Bingo
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@BlueKobold:
This is (IMO) another problem on pfSense that's caused by forum members recommending silly hardware for people getting into pfSense. It's pretty common to see someone with a 100/10 line get recommended to buy a modern i3, when a celeron or legacy eBay i3 would be more than capable - plenty of times people recommend buying a new $400 machine vs an old $80 machine citing the cost of electricity
APU2C4 bundle will be for ~200 - 250 Euro depending on the mSATA size and an internal WiFi option.
Jetway NF9HG-2930 will be for ~350 Euro and able to route nearly 1 GBit/s without PPPoE with many packets installed
But they are saving much electrical power against the "old PC in the corner".Haha, case in point. You just about always recommend one of those two silly little systems to everyone. So much so that I believe you are getting kickbacks.
WiFi but into freebsd sucks, and you know that but you still recommend it.
Route Nearly gigabit without PPPoE for 350 euro?! Wow what a deal :o.
That's horrible. How long will it take for that piece of crap to pay for itself with power savings? 5+ years in the most extreme case, well over a decade in almost all cases. And keep in mind the $80 eBay specials will run absolute circles around that thing in computing power. If you don't need computing power then you can get a much newer Celeron SoC brand new for WAY cheaper that will use the same power.Anyways, this has digressed far from the thread topic so I'm out.
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lol, I haven't browsed the boards for awhile, but like normal there is a lot of useful information in detail here. You guys are funny and very informative. I think you scared the OP off lol.
If you come back Nitewolf, I have used the HP v2 for years now and love it because it's quiet and reliable for homeuse…at least from my experience. I previously used corporate class switches (Nortel and Cisco), but I got tired of the jet fans and noise. The HP switch has enough power and config options for most home use.
