What is Best USB NIC 10Gbps that is supported by Pfsense?

stephenw10

Yeah, I've occasionally considered getting one for my laptop for those times I'm wanting to test above 1G. But cost has always put me off and, yeah, they mostly don't actually do 10G even if the laptop CPU can.
It's cheaper to get an external PCIe enclosure and put a 10G NIC in it.

But I would never do either of things for a pfSense box.

Steve

johnpoz

There are some reasonable priced 2.5 and 5gbs usb nics - if what your wanting to do is test above 1..

Which could work as long as your switch or where you were going to plug it in actually can do those speeds.. Some switches or nics either do 10 or 1. etc..

What I am waiting for is a reasonable priced multigig switch.. Where I can plug in copper and get 10/100/1/2.5/5/10 ;)

I would buy that switch in a heartbeat.. And all those ports wouldn't even have to be that.. Lets say 4 or 8 of the total ports.. But I can find no such animal that is not crazy priced for the home budget..

Barry007

@johnpoz mate look for this one is under budget price https://www.amazon.com/MikroTik-CRS305-1G-4S-Gigabit-Ethernet-RouterOS/dp/B07LFKGP1L/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=CRS305-1G-4S%2BIN&qid=1609189078&sr=8-3

Imagine having the above switch in your infra and 2 x 10gbps usb nic (LAN/WAN) - and have your pc with pci express card with sfp - straight fiber connection to switch - future proof infra what do you recon?

Barry007

@stephenw10 pfsense is cool - if you have lan / wan nics it will get faster speeds to internet, anyhow this mean more money for infra to pour in LOL, worth it though.

Barry007

@paint pfsense as we know is based on freebsd - adheros chipset is the one that pfsense works well with, also ASSIX does a good job too, i'm using a usb 3 nic that has 3 usb extension on it and it works flawlessly with my 950/500 connection, also supports vlan tagging.

johnpoz

Yeah have seen that switch.. And its not all that bad - but then start adding up the price of the sfps and its only a few ports. And you have to uplink that so your switch with all your other ports.

What I mean was say 24 port switch that had some multigig ports and some sfp+ options..

That is the unicorn I am looking for ;)

Something like the netgear XS724EM would be great.. But its $1600 ;)

If my current sg300 caught fire or something. Then yeah new switch with lots of ports would support 10gig, and then could prob get something like what you linked to support multigig.. But it would be bit pricey currently to do all that. Now in a few years when its time to replace my sg300.. Lets see what the pricing looks like ;) My sg300 is not eol til may of 2023.. I will in the market then for sure ;)

Barry007

@johnpoz well price vs options - seen the netgear but very expensive :)

johnpoz

Yeah.. I could not justify getting the gear I want ;) with the budget committee (wife) hehehe

So 10gig dreams are a few years down the road...

Paint

You can get brocade switches pretty cheap on ebay with 24 or 48 gigabit ports and 4x spf+. They are also managed layer 3 switches. This is what I run in my setup

Barry007

@johnpoz hehehe yeah same here, need to change wife too - 40gbps LOL

Barry007

@barry007 - i didnt know that with the change of technology even cabling has to change, ethernet cat 5 cannot deliver good performance anymore - has to be cat 6e and above, currently am using cat8 between ont and my intelligent box then from ibox to my lan same kind of cable, speedtest shows a drastic improvement.

Paint

@johnpoz 10gbe is great. dont tell the wife :)

johnpoz

@paint said in What is Best USB NIC 10Gbps that is supported by Pfsense?:

You can get brocade switches pretty cheap

And what do they draw for power? While that is great if a lab and only on X hours a week.. But old enterprise gear is not power friendly ;) Just what I don't want is some switch drawing 150W ;)

ethernet cat 5 cannot deliver good performance anymore

5e can do 5gbps.. And reported even 10ge for short distances.. But when I do go 10g, it will most likely be fiber.. I just want the copper support for 2.5 and 5gig..

At some point would like to see atleast 2.5 on my APs - and sure don't want to have to rerun cable in the attic - which is 5e..

Paint

@johnpoz said in What is Best USB NIC 10Gbps that is supported by Pfsense?:

@paint said in What is Best USB NIC 10Gbps that is supported by Pfsense?:

You can get brocade switches pretty cheap

And what do they draw for power? While that is great if a lab and only on X hours a week.. But old enterprise gear is not power friendly ;) Just what I don't want is some switch drawing 150W ;)

ethernet cat 5 cannot deliver good performance anymore

5e can do 5gbps.. And reported even 10ge for short distances.. But when I do go 10g, it will most likely be fiber.. I just want the copper support for 2.5 and 5gig..

At some point would like to see atleast 2.5 on my APs - and sure don't want to have to rerun cable in the attic - which is 5e..

These pull much less than 150w.....

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/brocade-icx-series-cheap-powerful-10gbe-40gbe-switching.21107/

stephenw10

Yeah, I run an ICX-6450-24P and it draws ~25W as stated there. I did swap out the fans too.

@stephenw10 Does that switch have the silent mode, runs half the PoE power budget with the fans off?

I've been looking at this for an upcoming move/network rebuild:

https://www.commscope.com/product-type/enterprise-networking/ethernet-switches/itemicx7150-24p/

Fanless has become a big thing for me.

Others that are interesting for me are the Cisco CBS350-24p-4x or the C1000-24p-4x.

stephenw10

It's pretty close to silent with the fans I put in it, which were nothing special, just what I had to hand. I don't really use the PoE much though, I have one access point running from it right now.

That switch is in my bedroom so...

Never seems to get hot:

SSH@ICX6450-24P Switch>show chassis 
The stack unit 1 chassis info: 

Power supply 1 (NA - AC - PoE) present, status ok
Power supply 2 not present

Fan 1 ok, speed (auto): [[1]]<->2
Fan 2 ok, speed (auto): [[1]]<->2

Fan controlled temperature: 40.5 deg-C

Fan speed switching temperature thresholds:
		Speed 1: NM<----->64       deg-C
		Speed 2:       59<-----> 88 deg-C (shutdown)

Sensor B Temperature Readings:
	Current temperature : 40.5 deg-C
Sensor A Temperature Readings:
	Current temperature : 35.0 deg-C
	Warning level.......: 78.0 deg-C
	Shutdown level......: 88.0 deg-C
Boot Prom MAC : 609c.9f54.14f2
Management MAC: 609c.9f54.14f2

Steve

@stephenw10 Thanks.

bingo600

@stephenw10 @jwj
Nice price on that switch w. 10G uplinks.

For a cheap fanless PoE+ switch , i have been very satisfied with the D-Link dgs-1100-08p. It has 64w total to share , and does PoE+ - Needed by my AP.
It has basic management (.1Q Vlans , SNMP Read etc.) , but no .1X , LLDP etc.

For the "full" featureset get the dgs-1210-10p.
Get the new model w. external PSU , as the one w. built in PSU gets rather hot (has to cost on power usage).

I primarily use the dgs-1100-08 or 08p as "my goto sattelite switch", in EU you can get the non PoE for $42.

I would select a 1210-24 or 28 series for the "core" , non PoE.
As SNMP RW , MAC Filtering , LLDP and .1X could be usable.

In US the Cisco "2xx & 3xx" have attractive pricing and functionality for the "Core", but for PoE i still think the dgs-1100-08p is hard to beat.

/Bingo

There are a lot of moving parts to this. I can only speak to my situation. Everyone has different drivers for what is best.

What do I want vs what do I need. With the 'want' stuff would I actually take advantage of any of that beyond some nice benchmarks.

I could fill my NAS full of SSD's and put a 10G nic in there. Get a 10G switch and put a 10G nic in a PC (one that I don't have, all apple laptops) and do some nice benchmarks. Thing is, day in and day out it doesn't matter to me. Time Machine backups backup fine now. Movies stream to the TV's without issue.

TV's, speakers and printers aren't going to be able to use more than 1G connections. Now or anytime in the future that matters.

Could I see a multi-gig uplink for AP's? Maybe. Thing is, now is a terrible time to upgrade. WiFi 6 is, already, yesterdays news. 6E is the thing that will make a real improvement. All that new spectrum fix's a lot of problems that can be frustrating. That is particularly true for my situation. Moving from an old house with big thick plaster on lath walls to a big open space (used to be a garment factory). It's going to a while before all the pieces fall into place. iPhones, iPads and laptops all available with new radios and how that line up with our upgrade cycle. It's going to be a few years.

So, I'll get some better (better in this case means not Unifi) AP's to cover the space. I have already bought one, used Ruckus r710 off ebay for a good price. I'm on the lookout for another. It's a 802.11ac wave 2 and that's fine for now. That AP can use a LAGG for the uplink and since no one client is going to saturate a 1G link that will work fine. Not convinced I would be able to take advantage of anything more than that even with 6E AP's. Solutions to problems I don't have is just wasted money.

So at the end of this long winded post, I'll look for and get a switch when I can find one for a good price. Probably going to a newish Ruckus/Brocade. The 24 or 48 port PoE with the silent mode. Truthfully a DLink would be fine. I can't justify the Ruckus with a bunch of talk, I just want it.

If new 6E AP's need more power than PoE+ I guess I'm out of luck and will just get injectors.

I'll also grab a SG-5100 when they come back in stock.