10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

I feel like we have moved into the era now where if you were putting cabling in the walls for networking you should be choosing fibre now. Not necessarily because we are definitely at the stage where the home needs it, but because the off ramp is clearly happening for ethernet at 10gbit/s and its really high consumption and heat. Switching to fibre after 2.5gbit/s seems like the thing to do now and plenty of us now have access to internet speeds that can exceed 2.5gbit/s.

If you are implementing 10 GBE at distances less than 5-7 m, I highly recommend standardizing on DAC cabling. It removes the need for these kinds of conversions that create these kinds of heat signatures.

Speaking of modules that lie about themselves, unifi has an interesting little device called the "SFP Wizard" that can reprogram sfp modules.

https://www.ui.com/us/en/integrations/accessory-tech/sfp-wiz...

Previously seen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732874

I know everyone is going to say I’m crazy

But for cabling, OS2 clear bend rated cable … pre-terminated is like the same price and currently have 25gb optics but I’m able to run over 100gb in my house without having to drill holes etc. (runs along the baseboards)

The cables are super thin… and clear/transparent

And I never have to replace the cable again I’m pretty sure haha

The bidi sfp28s $25 are awesome :)

And worst case if your service loop just … loops …. Eh haha

Gonna try using it for other things like hdmi etc too with a cassette :)

Cheap, low-heat 10G copper is already here. RTL8127 NIC is under $50, $200 nets you a quality 4x switch (CRS304-4XG-IN).

I am in the market for an SFP+ module and was looking at this exact model! The serendipity made me smile. Cheers mate.

Does anyone have any recs for GPON/XGS-PON SFP/SFP+ ONTs-on-a-stick that run cooler than average (say 50-65 °C)?

i have gfiber 8gb put in my house. a cost-effective high performance setup im using is unifi cloud gateway fiber + 2x microtik CRS305 SFP+ (for all my other 10G devices) + 2x unifi flex 2.5G. this setup gives me a lot of 10G ports for little cost. copper DAC cables are great (optical transceivers and cables also work for longer runs). another great hack for older houses is using goCoax MoCA 2.5 Adapter to run 2.5G around the house via coax cables to your wifi access points.

Recommendations for 25Gbit next please!

why not use fiber directly and use whatever sfp for much cheaper without worry of heat

Some time ago I was playing around with 10GbE using a Macbook Pro. At the time that meant a Thunderbolt adapter (and still does). Thing is, the one I got was essentially just a giant heatsink [1]. It was a beast and belied just how much of a problem heat distribution was. I'm not an EE so I'm not really sure why, other than by looking at what high bandwidth cables have done since.

10baseT (!0Mbps) came out in 1990 (there were non-twisted pair earlier versions). "Fast Ethernet" (100Mbps) came out in 1995. Copper 1GbE came out in 1999. Copper 10GbE came out in 2006. Ethernet seemed addicted to 10x'ing every version and 10GbE is really where everything fell apart. Or at least, it's where it got hard. We never really got mass market 10GbE. The controllers were too expensive. The cable requirements were quite high. And heat was an issue.

1GbE really was fast enough and 10GbE was a massive jump that I even remember thinking at the time that there should've been intermediate steps, which is what happened in 2016 with 2.5GbE and 5GbE.

Now compare to Thunderbolt, introduced in 2011, which has completely surpassed Ethernet bandwidth, in part by putting chips in the cables, but of course the big difference is cable length. A copper cat 6/7 cable can get to ~100 meters, which is also why the power is so high: attenuation.

but I guess my point is that 10GbE over copper was a mistake. We'd reached the point where you really had to swap over to fiber.

[1]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/127178476193