Great Thread. Glad to see the AQtion NIC work basically OOB. I ended up getting a few AQN-107-104-SFA from WPG Americas, they are on special for $69, but one should know they have no heatsinks. If you get one from another source from China around $160-ish some have small passive heatsinks. I have designed and built a few custom heatsinks before and plan on fabricating one with a PWM fan on it and connected it to the motherboard. The AQC-107 chip is great but its known for "not working as advertised" when it gets hot even with a passive heatsink on it.
I'm also shopping for a sub $600 10Gb switch.
This one from Edimax looks good.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...5175&cm_re=10gb_switch-_-33-315-175-_-Product
I like that its has 8 x RJ45 connectors and it's small not a rack size one.
This one does not look bad either, but its a bit bigger.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...&cm_re=10gb_switch-_-0XP-00NA-00001-_-Product
Any one here with some 10Gb switch knowledge that can shed some light on what to look for in these types of switches?
Either way good job on documenting the progress, can't wait to get back to the states and test things out. Will let you guys know of my progress soon.
I know quite a bit about Networking, actually....retired Cisco certified engineer......
Buffalo has two 10Gbe switches (8 Port and 12 Port), but they look to be unmanaged. Netgear has a managed 10Gbe switch, but it's pricey compared to the 8 port Buffalo. I will say that being able to manage the switch can be
very helpful. It's great to be able to see what the port(s) are doing. I am doing investigation on the Edimax switch you listed.
I found it at B and H, which does not charge Sales Tax for out of state customers:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1372391-REG/edimax_technology_xgs_5008_edimax_8_port_10gbe_web.html?ap=y&c3api=1876,{creative},{keyword}gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0JDWlJOV2QIVDNVkCh02igk2EAkYASABEgLsefD_BwE
That might be very interesting.
What's really happened, finally, is that manufacturers are starting to produce Computers with 10Gbe ports (thank you, Apple!!). That means that 10GBE switches are about to become very popular.....which means you may see, very soon, lots more new 10Gbe switches, with a lot of pressure on prices.
You must enable jumbo frames to get real benefit out of these devices, btw....and you need a device (typically a router, or a layer 3 switch) that can communicate and translate between devices that use typical Ethernet frames (~1500) and Jumbo frames (~9000). I suspect some of these devices can, but this is always something you need to check and be sure about before you jump in to the 10GBE swamp.
For me, as I now do Video Editing as my profession, when I'm transferring 4k, 6K (red dragon) and even 8K files over my LAN, 10GBE makes my life much easier. Two years ago I worked on a feature that was using the Red Dragon (6K) files in 12 bit color (absolutely gorgeous), but that was just eating up my network alive.....I remembered that and have worked to correct for that and upgrade ever since, but 10GBE didn't happen until just recently for most small Film and Video Production houses.
The flood (of 10Gbe devices) is about to start.....it may start out slowly, but it will accelerate and soon it will be a flood.....and that should be a good thing......some of those newer 10Gbe devices will be crap, but most will be good....you just have to be careful for a while......