I, too, keep hearing the argument that 2.5G shouldn't exist. But as someone who manages networks, 2.5G is awesome because I don't have to rip out 400+ Cat5e cables in multiple buildings.
It still shouldn't exist because its an underperforming spec.... like 1G networks are potato class hardware these days its cents for a 1G nic, 10G even was only advanced 20 years ago... now it should be ubiquitous. What is even crazier is most AMD CPUs of the past few hears ahve an integrated 10G nic that is never routed out on but except maybe a single EPYC embedded board but they all have it. It's even worse that $250+ motherboards ship with shitty 1 or 2.5G nics... instead of 10G... if I were selling mobo's I'd be embarassed to sell anything over that price with a 1G nic completely embarrassed.
I love 2.5 honestly and to be honest other than accessing on-site hardware. It's useless going any higher unless in a large buisness building. Since your prob not gonna saturate all those links and have websites that will even supply that much bandwidth too you. IMO
What's the argument for 2.5G in the remotely normal home, though? I can't contrive a situation that even a hobbyist would engage in that would meaningfully benefit from going beyond gigabit? Genuinely curious.
@@TheHuesSciTechFile transfers to a NAS for one thing. Networked storage is a pretty mainstream use case and even a single HDD can far exceed gigabit. Cutting the transfer time to a little under half is a big improvement that just about anyone can readily notice
Thanks for what you do! Can you please start doing a regular session on managed switches with 2.5, 10, and poe++? I think a lot of us need these for dual 10g nas ports and powering those power hungry 6e AP's. Anyone else agree?
WOW! THANK YOU! We are going to start working on more of those soon. As in, Bryan did photos/ B-Roll for them yesterday. Maybe in an October update we will have more of them.
Yes please! I'm not running WiFi 6e APs yet, but I'm just done with unmanaged devices. I've done the UniFi thing for a while, and I'm looking for the next thing.
Yes! Especially because searching poe++ is always saturated with 802.3af/at units and not bt. Then when you find something that does do poe++, it's gigabit only.
It's not uncommon for manufacturers to produce a product and then sell it under multiple brand names that compete against each other. Sometimes they will even go so far as to market them to different targets with significantly different prices. I suspect that is the case for some of these such as the Sodola and Mokerlink or the Yuanley and Davuaz.
My most prescient example of this is steadler erasers. They've got two packs at the dollar store for 2 dollars, and single packs at the art store for 7.50
Or a manufacturer has a model that brands can license to attach their name to (so the brands aren’t necessarily owned by the same company as the manufacturer but they all basically release the same product).
There havent been many regular consumers needing anything faster. Its rare to use fast home server and who has internet connection faster than 1 gig? Most people are also lazy so they go with wifi. Prosumer level seems to have gotten big enough and technology gotten cheap enough that there is enough demand now.
@@OceansideCASailing I dont need to transfer files between my comps and i have only slow nas so no need to upgrade currently. At some point it will happen but then prices might have gone down.
Bear in mind that the speed increase going from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps, is equivalent to going from 100 Mbps to 190 Mbps, not from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps. So you should expect going from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps to take longer than going from 10 Mbps to 100 mbps. And 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps should take even longer. We're also running into limitations of the speed of light. If you're varying a signal at 312 MHz like the Cat6 sec says, a wavelength is only 96 cm long. Meaning a 10 meter cable is actually "storing" 10 waves in transit along it at any moment. Reminds me of the old days of racetrack memory.
I entirely agree with the frustration that major brands aren't offering something like this. I'll probably be ordering one of the 4x2.5+2x10G models soon as it's enough for my immediate needs but I wish someone would offer a switch with 8x 2.5G, 2x 10G, at least four ports of PoE, and basic VLANs. That'd be my perfect desktop switch for now.
@@wojtek-33 The TP Link costs 450€, the ubiqiti is 480-500€, the netgear is 800€ those Aliexpress switches are 30-70€.. There is a massive price difference..
Does anyone know what SFP+ modules are compatible with these switches? Which of the regular compatibility options would fit best (Cisco, Dell etc. ?) given that these brands are obviously not an option?
@@TheExileFox Correct, TP Link have been around for years and is a "brand" name, unlike 90% of these ones you can't even pronounce, will they still be working in 3 months ?
@@chuckholmes2075 My opnsense firewall is running on Chinese hardware though 😅 lol. I am somewhat concered of firmware level malware when buying mini-pc's etc from AliExpress but I'm not smart enough to know how to check/prevent it. I think eventually I'll just assemble and old pc with standard parts from hopefully more reputable companies
I've been running the Vimin variant for over a month now without any issues and its been flawless. That said, there were some small details that I think should be mentioned.. The included AC adapter was an extremely cheap phone style block with a USB type A ouput to barrel output that looked like a fire hazard. The Mokerlnk adapter (also purchased the 5x2.5 1x10G) was a little more reassuring looking. Also, when powered the Vimin has a blinking green LED on the interior that is bright enough to be seen through the chasis and the front ports, and has no relation to operation. Opened my unit and stuck a small piece of cardboard to minimize the light show.
I literally just received the 9 port YuanLey model w/ PoE+ from Amazon yesterday. I didn't see it in any roundup from STH at the time of purchase but figured $130 for 8 2.5G ports with PoE+ and SFP+ was too good to pass up. It's been working great so far and is perfect for those of us running 2.5GbE capable APs. I'm getting well above 1 Gig transfer rates to my NAS from WIRELESS devices! Wireless! Consider me blown away. It sure beats dropping the $479 Ubiquiti wants for their 8 port 2.5GbE PoE switch.
What are you doing on your server that can saturate a 10 gig link? I'm genuinely curious if there's any point to this beyond-1-gigabit stuff that isn't just "ooh shiny big numbers" -- not trolling -- genuinely don't understand?
Another great article. What I would find helpful, and maybe you've already done it and I'm just not seeing it, is a guide to what would then plug into the SFP port, which transceiver, which card, and then which cable. Thanks again for helping really clarify the myriad of offerings out there!
The 8-port version of the Sodola SL-SWTG015AS (called 8X2.5G+10G SFP on AZ) is currently only $99, I bought one about five months ago and it has been working fine so far. I think it's worth mentioning because you posted the Sodola SL-SGT108-P which is currently around $95 and for about the same price, you can get the same switch but with an added 10GbE SFP+. If people "don't need" the SFP+ then just save the $4 but, with a .5m DAC cable only like $9, it's a great way to uplink switches like these together.
I also got the 2x 10Gb SFP+ 4x 2.5GbE ( 3:17 ) for being the middle node with having two 1x 10Gb SFP+ 8x 2.5GbE ( 7:42 ) connected to the node via 850nm fiber. Should be good enough for a simple home network without a need for several VLANS and other gimmicks I have no use nor interest in maintaining.
Thanks for highlighting these. I'm in the process of doing some upgrades to my networking setup in my apartment and 2.5 gig has been a focus for cost purposes.
I've been hoping for a couple years now that 2.5G would hurry up and become the new low end entry point like 1G has been for almost a decade now. This looks like that ball has finally started rolling. Now if the big names will start replacing all their 1G switches with 2.5G equivalents.
So true, at the time internet was slow and same was for HDDs, but rn we have cheap SSDs that can push 3-6GBps and even entry level NASes start having multiple 2.5 or 5Gb ports with NVMe support, we need at the very least 2.5GbE to become the new standard
I used to think 1G was standard, as my desktop in 2007 had it. But once my internet got upgraded, I realized the Gigabit routers I bought in 2016 through 2020 did not have any gigabit ports on them, only gigabit WiFI. Between 2015 and 2021 I lived in a mountain town, so the fasted interent was 15Mbps, and thunderstorms were rought on ethernet ports. I learned to unplug everything, the ethernet going from one room to another picked up enough inductive charge to fry ethernet ports even when power strips ion both rooms were unpoluged from the wall. So i kept a router on spare, as ordering one would take a few days or any hour drive to buy a way overpriced one.
@@javaman2883 - That is pretty interesting. I've never heard of the Ethernet indoors getting enough static buildup to fry ports. On outdoor Wifi access points a static build up is more common and they make shielded Ethernet cable with a electrostatic drain-wire to help siphon that off. It requires special shielded plugs with a drain-wire connection, and of course a switch with shielded ports that is also grounded through a three wire power cable or else a separate ground wire.
Thanks for covering these devices! The PCBs appear small enough that a manufacturer could make Ethernet Switch Card in PCIe form factor, where the host could have a dedicated port via the PCIe connection and even a second management over PCIe for managed variants of such cards.
but... u could buy a 4port nic and use ur pc as a switch lmao, bought a cisco c240 m3 for homelabbing, i has 3x4Gb Nics, so theres all my vms and also serves as switch, my isp router is the Home network and from there i got 2 uplink for my cisco where all MY things connect, so i dont fck up my home's internet if i start doing anything lol
Good to see prices coming down on 2.5gE switches. I've had motherboards with onboard 2.5gE nics for the better part of a decade now, and have never used them at their rates speed. The switches were always way too expensive to justify the upgrade.
Yea Rohit covered that on the main site. MikroTik's design is higher power/ performance but also more than twice the price. Hopefully they start shipping them soon instead of in many months.
The YuanLey, Devuaz and Vimin switches with 4x 2.5Gbe and 2x 10Gb SFP+ are probably the exact same product. The layout suggests that they're all using the same PCB inside.
THEY ARE. Plenty Chinese Manufacturers do that on Amazon/EBay/Walmart for the last 6 years. With those ridiculous names trying to sound cool for electronics.
It would be really cool if you took some of the heat sinks off and did some chip ID. It wouldn't take very long (couple seconds per switch). Thanks for the video!
@@ServeTheHomeVideo An update for you. The switch I ordered for £26.20 arrived. I can't test the SPF+, but the 2.5Gbe ports are working as advertised. Bargain.
I had problems with cheap switches in the past: because of delivery-shortage of network devices, an electrician installed a cheap poe-switch for security cameras. and it took me some hours to figure out that it injected bad frequencies in the buildings power-circuits that stopped working all of the customers powerline-adapters. the errors were gone seconds after i disconnected this cheap switch. I told the customer better get a d-link or tp-link.
I already have a QNAP 2.5gbit with SFP+. What I am really interested in is a eight port multi-gigabit 10gbit copper and one SFP+ port switch. There are 2-3 on the market, but they are all $500+.
These 4+2 models are really promising - have been looking for a low wattage switch to handle just a router, APs, and a fast link to my separate home lab. These might just do the trick! Only thing that would make them better for that use case is PoE.
2.5G works on most existing structured cabling I have tested where as 10G is very flaky unless you have modern cat6/cat6E or better. Also these cheap 2.5G switches seem to be much more stable and solid than connections to 10GBASET sfp+. 10G into the average laptop/desktop is very difficult to achieve (spare X4 slot for example) , 2.5G is cheap and easy. These cheap switches are a revolution for breaching the 1G barrier and I am telling everyone I know with a high performance home network to buy them (I am an ISP network architect).
Thank you for your work Patrick, and team! You are always so enthusiastic, keep it that way! I moved my home network to 2.5Gbe thanks to your video I randomly came across, now subscribed and looking forward to each new one :-)
It's pretty amazing how cheap these 2.5gbe switches are getting. Probably better to buy a mid range priced switch since its probably built with better parts and chassis. Heat is my main issue since my Network Panel is jammed packed with about a dozen devices! Great video brother.
During Prime day I saw a 2.5GbE switch, with 5 ports and 2 ports, thinking it was one like these here. When I looked at the specs, I saw that it was 5 gigabit ports, with 2 2.5GbE ports for $75 normally $110. Glad I watched this video to know that wasn't a good deal.
Depends on what you need. I'm considering setting up a little mini-cluster where I need to hook up five to eight hand-me-down devices with gigabit and one device with 2.5G that'll have the SSD they all pull their data from. Given that none of the gigabit devices are going to saturate their links when doing CPU-bound stuff like batch thumbnailing, the concern is a cost-effective way to avoid bottlenecking between them and the machine doubling as a storage server/task dispatcher as the I/O gets concentrated, so it makes sense to have at least ONE switch in the house that has a couple of 2.5Gbit ports, five to eight 1Gbit ports, and a backplane really only needs to be good enough to allow saturating the one 2.5Gbit port in both directions.
I recently got one of those YuanLey 6-port units and I have it fully populated with a mixture of 10Gb, 2.5Gb and 1Gb connections. It works well and I got it on Amazon for $63 so I've been pretty happy with it.
Not quite the same, but I've been using a Zyxel XGS1010-12 for $150 for nearly 3 years now. It's 8x 1Gb, 2x 2.5Gb, and 2x SFP+. It's not all 2.5G of course and won't work for everyone, but I don't think that's a common use scenario yet. So many devices won't even utilize more than 1Gb yet.
just upgraded to a 2 gig connection, UDM SE, and U6E AP. The Vimin switch works great with an SFP+ DAC to the UDM, and the AP, pushing the full 2gig connection all the way through without issues
I got the POE version of the Davuaz 4/2 switch -- actually ended up getting 3 of them. Even though my Unifi 6 are not 2.5gb capable, I noticed a near 2x jump in throughput on wifi performance moving the Wifi APs to these and from 1gb POE switches. I think having POE switches connect to the network through 10gb helps a great deal in freeing up switching throughput. I read some reviews about other switches with the same layout -- likely same internals having some issues with both SFP ports occupied, not my use case, so I've been very happy with what I am getting. You should also test Power usage with SFP using either direct copper or fiber. SFP to ethernet is the least power efficient and those adapters can run really hot -- 80-90c is normal for some of them.
I just got this “Davuaz 2.5G PoE Switch with 8 x 2.5G Base-T Ports and 1 x 10G SFP Uplink Port” as I needed 2.5 Gbe POE for wifi 6E AP, a Mikrotik router board, and a couple raspberry pi’s. Fit great in my rack, I need to power test though.
I'm commenting just to show my support of this channel. Good stuff, and I end up buying stuff that I think comes from this guy. Its hard to find fellow enterprise guys that I can listen to for entertainment.
Well this video couldn't have been better timed. I just got fiber internet literally yesterday and was going to look at cheap options to upgrade my 1GbE home network to be able to handle the extra traffic from my server better.
Regarding the Vimin switch: Recently the German RUclipsr Raspberry Pi Cloud did a review on it and did elaborate a bit on the VLAN switch. If active it seperates all 2.5G ports from each other, but clients plugged in there could still make a connection to the 10G ports...well, at least one of them. If to both I dont know, didn't get an answer to my question about that. He's a busy man and I'm one of many, so no hard feelings. Another point I do wonder about is how the IP addresses are handled when that switch is enabled. Or how this seperation is handled at all. From what I know right now you better use one of the 10G ports for uplink.
The second one I use to connect my wifi 6 access point and a couple of home plugs that need 2.5 gbit. Works like a charm, the 10 gb sfp+ is really a plus when connecting the uplink port from my unifi aggregation
While not the fanciest switches on the market, they are going to start disrupting the market for users like me with only a few devices that need the higher connectivity. Really hoping the Flex line of Unifi switches need to drop in price to become a bit more comparable. I can't imagine the BOM cost is 10X higher for a 10G switch which sells for $299 than a 1G switch which sells for $29.
6 months after this review.. Found TONS of 8 port 2.5GbE + 1 port 10Gb SFP+ for around $35 and I'm looking at one for $32.50 USD w/free shipping from Aliexpress. And the reviews look legit, not bad at all
These are perfect. I want a switch to connect up from my gateway to the wireless AP's on my network. I have 3 ubiquiti AP's they are 1gbe connection but future ones wont be. I also get a 10g link back to the gateway. And its fibre so electrical isolation for upstream devices.
I don't understand why ppl complain about 2.5gbps ethernet, it's a standard ratified with IEEE 802.3bz, and it is absolutely great for companies that are still running cat5e, but need a network update, but doesn't have the money atm to pay for new cables all over. Sure you have to weigh the pros and cons of it would be better to go with 10gbps or even 40gbps and slowly update the cables, but I'm a network geek and I think it's a great option. The more options to choose from the better.
We are going to have the full review on the STH main site. It is written, my guess is that it goes live this week but it depends on if there is any big news. If not, the full review will go live next week.
My biggest concern is still is there anything malicious in the no-name switch's firmware? The TP-Link one is probably the only one I would trust since they are a well know trusted brand.
Interestingly none of these models appear on taobao. On the contrary western market is being flooded by lots of variations of the same thing. I'd send some to top security researches for super-sophisticated chip-level rootkits.
Thanks for the video. It doesn't always just come down to the cheapest possible device. In the end, if you have specific requirements and need a managed switch, with proper vlan handling and configuration for example, most of what was shown here will be an immediate definitive no-go. Cheers :)
I bought the NICGIGA version of this for $56 ($69.99 - 20% coupon). It happily moved some 4 terabytes between 250-300MBps and hasn't caused any issues for a few months. It makes no noise (fan or electrical) that I can tell. Unless there's some chip in there sending my logins to somebody, I don't see any problems with it.
Lol I just ordered the recommended QNAP 4 port 2.5gbe + 2 port 10gb sfp+ the other day for double the price of these new ones, it hasn’t even been delivered yet haha. Ultimately I think I’m going to keep it as it’s still relatively inexpensive and is a well known brand, but of course this video comes out 2 days after I put off buying the switch for months 😂
@@ServeTheHomeVideo yep agreed. If the QNAP was like $300 or something I’d probably return it and take the chance on one of these, but for $130 it’s already very reasonable and as you said there’s value in more “legit” products/companies.
Very nice Switch. I have a Problem with the Daisy Chain 10gbit Switches, which are not the Switches but the Cores for the Network. They are Cheap enough but on a Daisy Chain you get only 2 10Gbit inputs and lot of 2.5Gbit and since they are unmanaged you have the problem of Cascading losses. Imo the Problem is that there are no Cheap 10Gb Switches out there which matches the 2x10 4x 2.5 GB Switches. The Hasivo S1100WP-8XGT-SE costs around 4 Times of the Smaller Switches. The TP-Link 5 Port TP-Link TL-SX105 is not much Cheaper. Something like the TP-Link with 5x 10Gbit or SFP+ for DAC Cables for 150-200$ would make those 70$ Switches very viable and Intresting. 3-4 Switches Some maybe even Daisychained so maybe 4 Switched 2 Daisychained. And the 5x 10GGbit for Server/Nas Uplink would result in a Cheap powerfull Network with 5x10Gbit Edge Connections and 20x 2.5Gbit Edge Connections. Alternativly a QNAP QSW-M408-4C one less 10Gbit Port but 8 1Gbit for Appliances. Nice for a small Office with 4 Rooms and two Desks per Room. Or Homelab. But ATM the 10Gbit Switch would costs as much as all the other Switches together. Search on Aliepxress and you will be helped. Maybe a Feature about the "ONTi 8 * 10G SFP+ Switch Desktop Unmanaged Ethernet Network Switch" for 150$ 8x SFP+ 10Gbit Port unmanaged or 250 USD managed would beat the Hasivo and be the perfect core for a small office/Homelab.
i ordered the tp-link switch for 60 bucks a month ago. i regret it now. it is now offered for 25 bucks and the SFP+ versions are also cheaper than what i paid.
Really love all the 2.5GbE content, but what about some bigger switches? I would need a 16-port or 24-port for my home network. Unfortunately your guides only cover up to like max 8 ports.
It would be nice if you would include link aggregation as a check box in your reviews and review pages on your site. Basically, I'd like to know when devices support link aggregation or not. Link Aggregation or Port Bonding is why I haven't much considered replacing my gigabit ethernet network with 2.5Gb yet since my server and main workstation are both using dual, bonded links to my switch which supports LA. If any of these cheap switches supported LA and there were cheap dual port 2.5 NICs available, I'd consider upgrading but at this point I'm waiting for cheap 10Gb before I make the jump.
Usually you need managed switches for that. At the same time, with SMB3 multichannel being supported by most Windows/ Linux desktops and most NAS distributions at this point, you can just use that with unmanaged switches and get similar performance.
@ServeTheHomeVideo Good point, though Link Aggregation works with everything, not just SMB. BUT, having just watched your hasivo 10Gb switch review, it's hard to consider 2.5Gb without smart features or LA as a serious upgrade option anymore. IMO, you're now better off holding off on upgrading until you can save up the difference for the hasivo 10Gb switch, at which point you end up with a faster, more feature filled, managed switch. The $150-200 price difference makes it to sweet a deal to pass up.
Do you have jitter measurements in your test data? In my experience this can be a problem with cheap switches with latency sensitive applications. Like in home game streaming for example.
I have witnessed the same issues when testing performance for the same application, game streaming. Cheap switches can have up to 5ms latency, but a higher grade switch should be
I wondered: are these units identical, or slmost identical? I really wanted to see inside all of them, but you only showed inside a couple of them. You showed that the performance was identical, and they look similar, but do they also have the same board design, same chips, etc.? Thanks for the great review. this hit the nail on the head as I'm currently shopping to upgrade my home network.
Horaco is also one of the brands it seems, they have this same switch under "New Arrivals". I was so close to pulling the trigger on their 8x2.5GbE+1x10G-SFP model, looks just like the Yuanley model but was also available L2 managed.
Anyone who complains that these are more expensive than the old 5-8 port Netgear / etc that everyone loves... Give it time. I remember paying ~$110 for a 5 port Netgear 1Gb switch. Hell, I remember paying like $60 for a 5 port Netgear 10/100 switch a long time ago.
Great segment, all of your explanations are very easy to follow. When you brought up Port Mirroring, a security question came to mind. There are so many manufacturers or Network switches, some appear to be USA companies, and others we have no idea where they are from. I have seen videos where the same electronics appears to be in different packaging with different company names. Question: How secure are Network switches, and how can we know if any of our network traffic (personal data) is being “forwarded” without our knowledge to a person or company to be used for nefarious purposes. Is there a way to determine if this is being done?
On unmanaged switches it is hard. If you tried forwarding all traffic people will see 2.5Gbps+ streams easily. These do not have enough CPU power to do deep packet inspection and select which packets to send.
Has anyone checked for possible security risks arising from these off-brand switches? I'm a bit worried about backdoors and whatnot. With known brands, there's a smaller chance of that happening, and at least you know who to blame. With MiktoTik CSS610-8G-2S+IN being $119 with nice features such as SNMP, I'm not sure I should accept the security risk for $50.
We usually have these running with iperf3 traffic flowing for weeks before we do the video. I guess the question is that if these cost half or a quarter of the price, is it something you self-warranty
Thanks for spending a great deal of time end effort on these reviews. Please can you detail your throughput testing methodology, as those figures are of limited use without more detail, I also didn't see this mention on the website: - RFC2544 ? - Small ~64KB packets? - IMIX packet size spread? - Large ~1500KB packets? - Single unidirectional or simultaneous bidirectional throughput tests?
I'd love a cheap 2.5GbE switch with 10Gbase-T uplinks. I don't use SFP+ on any of my equipment right now so it's kind of annoying to have to buy a SFP+ to 10Gbase-T converter even if they're not that expensive.
8:32 An RLT network IC with 4x 2.5 GB port, an extra Realtek IC for the fifth 2.5 GB IC and 1x SFP+ slot. 3:31 An RLT network IC with 4x 2.5 GB ports and 2x SFP+ slots. Is this a coincidence? I have the variant with 5x 2.5GB and 1 SFP. I can only recommend it 10:35 The 8x 2.5 GB + 1 SFP variant: 4x the first IC, 4x the second IC, both use an internal connection to each other, then the SFP+ remains free.
Depends entirely on your personal situation. I have oscilloscopes and power supplies connected to my switch, but that's obviously a niche thing. Maybe you want to play around with a raspberry pi one day. Maybe you'll get a network-attached printer. I dunno.
Coulda swore we stopped using 'disrupt' unironically in 2017. Anyway, did you do any testing to see if these switches open ports and funnel traffic back to China servers? That's my concern about cheap stuff, exchanging cheap price for data siphoning.
An "unmanaged" switch such as the ones presented here really has no possibility to do that. It works on the L2 level (MAC addresses) which provides no connectivity to the outside world. With a "managed" switch (which has an IP address at L3) that would be possible. You would need to configure your router not to allow access to the internet for the switch (or not configure a default gateway in the switch) for some basic protection.
fyi though on cost, 1Gb is actually 1.28Gb bidirectional, 1.5Gb is 2.56Gb and not bidirectional. one of the reasons 2.5g chips are so flaky is probably that they're cheap hacks of standard 1Gbe chips. It's actually the same bandwidth, just with the normally bidirectional bandwidth now switching between send and receive instead of being dedicated to it, so you're a lot more likely to actually saturate the link. So, basically, we're still really only in the gigabit generation in consumer hardware.
I, too, keep hearing the argument that 2.5G shouldn't exist. But as someone who manages networks, 2.5G is awesome because I don't have to rip out 400+ Cat5e cables in multiple buildings.
Exactly.
It still shouldn't exist because its an underperforming spec.... like 1G networks are potato class hardware these days its cents for a 1G nic, 10G even was only advanced 20 years ago... now it should be ubiquitous. What is even crazier is most AMD CPUs of the past few hears ahve an integrated 10G nic that is never routed out on but except maybe a single EPYC embedded board but they all have it. It's even worse that $250+ motherboards ship with shitty 1 or 2.5G nics... instead of 10G... if I were selling mobo's I'd be embarassed to sell anything over that price with a 1G nic completely embarrassed.
I love 2.5 honestly and to be honest other than accessing on-site hardware. It's useless going any higher unless in a large buisness building. Since your prob not gonna saturate all those links and have websites that will even supply that much bandwidth too you. IMO
What's the argument for 2.5G in the remotely normal home, though? I can't contrive a situation that even a hobbyist would engage in that would meaningfully benefit from going beyond gigabit? Genuinely curious.
@@TheHuesSciTechFile transfers to a NAS for one thing. Networked storage is a pretty mainstream use case and even a single HDD can far exceed gigabit. Cutting the transfer time to a little under half is a big improvement that just about anyone can readily notice
Thanks for what you do! Can you please start doing a regular session on managed switches with 2.5, 10, and poe++? I think a lot of us need these for dual 10g nas ports and powering those power hungry 6e AP's. Anyone else agree?
WOW! THANK YOU! We are going to start working on more of those soon. As in, Bryan did photos/ B-Roll for them yesterday. Maybe in an October update we will have more of them.
Yes please! I'm not running WiFi 6e APs yet, but I'm just done with unmanaged devices. I've done the UniFi thing for a while, and I'm looking for the next thing.
I'm interested in the managed switches, too.
I run multiple vlans at home.
Yes! Especially because searching poe++ is always saturated with 802.3af/at units and not bt. Then when you find something that does do poe++, it's gigabit only.
Yes! 2.5/10 managed would be great.
It's not uncommon for manufacturers to produce a product and then sell it under multiple brand names that compete against each other. Sometimes they will even go so far as to market them to different targets with significantly different prices. I suspect that is the case for some of these such as the Sodola and Mokerlink or the Yuanley and Davuaz.
My most prescient example of this is steadler erasers. They've got two packs at the dollar store for 2 dollars, and single packs at the art store for 7.50
They're doing the spiderman meme
Or a manufacturer has a model that brands can license to attach their name to (so the brands aren’t necessarily owned by the same company as the manufacturer but they all basically release the same product).
"The illusion of choice"
How can you go about confirming if the switch was made by the same manufacturer? You seem to realize this, but how do you know this?
It's crazy how long 1Gb has been the standard.
There havent been many regular consumers needing anything faster. Its rare to use fast home server and who has internet connection faster than 1 gig? Most people are also lazy so they go with wifi. Prosumer level seems to have gotten big enough and technology gotten cheap enough that there is enough demand now.
My house has used the same 1gb switches since 2007. I'll upgrade once my PCs start supporting 2.5g
@@OceansideCASailing I dont need to transfer files between my comps and i have only slow nas so no need to upgrade currently. At some point it will happen but then prices might have gone down.
Bear in mind that the speed increase going from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps, is equivalent to going from 100 Mbps to 190 Mbps, not from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps. So you should expect going from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps to take longer than going from 10 Mbps to 100 mbps. And 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps should take even longer.
We're also running into limitations of the speed of light. If you're varying a signal at 312 MHz like the Cat6 sec says, a wavelength is only 96 cm long. Meaning a 10 meter cable is actually "storing" 10 waves in transit along it at any moment. Reminds me of the old days of racetrack memory.
@@OceansideCASailing If your PC has empty PCI-E slots, it's just a matter of buying a NIC for 2.5g or even 10G.
I entirely agree with the frustration that major brands aren't offering something like this. I'll probably be ordering one of the 4x2.5+2x10G models soon as it's enough for my immediate needs but I wish someone would offer a switch with 8x 2.5G, 2x 10G, at least four ports of PoE, and basic VLANs. That'd be my perfect desktop switch for now.
MikroTik just announced 8 port 2.5G switch, with 2x SFP+
@@wojtek-33 The TP Link costs 450€, the ubiqiti is 480-500€, the netgear is 800€ those Aliexpress switches are 30-70€.. There is a massive price difference..
The MikroTik is $219 so it neatly fits inbetween. It is 8+2 ports. @@TA-mx3zm
@@andiszile Mikrotik CRS310-8G+2S+IN And it looks awesome!
Does anyone know what SFP+ modules are compatible with these switches? Which of the regular compatibility options would fit best (Cisco, Dell etc. ?) given that these brands are obviously not an option?
Vimin Switch: The VLan switch ensures that Ports 1-4 cannot communicate with each other but with ports 5&6 (to separate networks).
This is correct.
its not really vlan, but port isolation
I'd love this feature on more low port count switches (properly labeled)
@@magfalloads of aliexpress poe switches have that featire
@@arandomguy4478 I'd like to see it on switches that I can trust.
That TP-Link unit didn't even have shielded ports for the 2.5 Gb ports. Real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff right there.
Yea. That is why it is in the "not recommended list"
That's kind of what you would expect from a TP-Link
TP is in the name! 😅
Even so it can be really reliable.
@@TheExileFox Correct, TP Link have been around for years and is a "brand" name, unlike 90% of these ones you can't even pronounce, will they still be working in 3 months ?
Has anyone tested the Chinese switches for security reasons?
This needs more upvotes.
It is not very likely that dumb switches like this have security issues.
And if they had, they would just as likely have them when being American.
as long as you're behind NAT or a firewall and run a Smart Router then I think you'd be safe.
Nonsense. You need to be way more scared of the NSA/CIA/FBI and the US NATO war machine.
@@chuckholmes2075 My opnsense firewall is running on Chinese hardware though 😅 lol. I am somewhat concered of firmware level malware when buying mini-pc's etc from AliExpress but I'm not smart enough to know how to check/prevent it. I think eventually I'll just assemble and old pc with standard parts from hopefully more reputable companies
I've been running the Vimin variant for over a month now without any issues and its been flawless. That said, there were some small details that I think should be mentioned.. The included AC adapter was an extremely cheap phone style block with a USB type A ouput to barrel output that looked like a fire hazard. The Mokerlnk adapter (also purchased the 5x2.5 1x10G) was a little more reassuring looking. Also, when powered the Vimin has a blinking green LED on the interior that is bright enough to be seen through the chasis and the front ports, and has no relation to operation. Opened my unit and stuck a small piece of cardboard to minimize the light show.
I literally just received the 9 port YuanLey model w/ PoE+ from Amazon yesterday. I didn't see it in any roundup from STH at the time of purchase but figured $130 for 8 2.5G ports with PoE+ and SFP+ was too good to pass up. It's been working great so far and is perfect for those of us running 2.5GbE capable APs. I'm getting well above 1 Gig transfer rates to my NAS from WIRELESS devices! Wireless! Consider me blown away. It sure beats dropping the $479 Ubiquiti wants for their 8 port 2.5GbE PoE switch.
Super! We have the Davuaz version too already tested, but not in time for this set of 9 switches.
Same and I love mine makes transferring to and from my nas ez pz
@zackkoukios8123 thank can you provide the link to this switch please?
@@be-kind00 it's under the same Amazon listing that STH posted in the video description. It's the YuaLey 9 port | 8*PoE+
Does it support vlan trunk/tagging?
The Vimin joke, and especially Patrick’s happiness after was amazing.
Great video, finally may get my server hooked up over 10 gig
I was a bit surprised that this made the cut
What are you doing on your server that can saturate a 10 gig link? I'm genuinely curious if there's any point to this beyond-1-gigabit stuff that isn't just "ooh shiny big numbers" -- not trolling -- genuinely don't understand?
@@TheHuesSciTechespecially useful for uplinks where a single 1Gbps stream, for example a backup or big download, can saturate the link
Another great article. What I would find helpful, and maybe you've already done it and I'm just not seeing it, is a guide to what would then plug into the SFP port, which transceiver, which card, and then which cable. Thanks again for helping really clarify the myriad of offerings out there!
The 8-port version of the Sodola SL-SWTG015AS (called 8X2.5G+10G SFP on AZ) is currently only $99, I bought one about five months ago and it has been working fine so far. I think it's worth mentioning because you posted the Sodola SL-SGT108-P which is currently around $95 and for about the same price, you can get the same switch but with an added 10GbE SFP+. If people "don't need" the SFP+ then just save the $4 but, with a .5m DAC cable only like $9, it's a great way to uplink switches like these together.
I think we reviewed that one in the last video and showed it quickly here.
I also got the 2x 10Gb SFP+ 4x 2.5GbE ( 3:17 ) for being the middle node with having two 1x 10Gb SFP+ 8x 2.5GbE ( 7:42 ) connected to the node via 850nm fiber. Should be good enough for a simple home network without a need for several VLANS and other gimmicks I have no use nor interest in maintaining.
Thanks for highlighting these. I'm in the process of doing some upgrades to my networking setup in my apartment and 2.5 gig has been a focus for cost purposes.
I've been hoping for a couple years now that 2.5G would hurry up and become the new low end entry point like 1G has been for almost a decade now. This looks like that ball has finally started rolling. Now if the big names will start replacing all their 1G switches with 2.5G equivalents.
So true, at the time internet was slow and same was for HDDs, but rn we have cheap SSDs that can push 3-6GBps and even entry level NASes start having multiple 2.5 or 5Gb ports with NVMe support, we need at the very least 2.5GbE to become the new standard
I used to think 1G was standard, as my desktop in 2007 had it. But once my internet got upgraded, I realized the Gigabit routers I bought in 2016 through 2020 did not have any gigabit ports on them, only gigabit WiFI.
Between 2015 and 2021 I lived in a mountain town, so the fasted interent was 15Mbps, and thunderstorms were rought on ethernet ports. I learned to unplug everything, the ethernet going from one room to another picked up enough inductive charge to fry ethernet ports even when power strips ion both rooms were unpoluged from the wall. So i kept a router on spare, as ordering one would take a few days or any hour drive to buy a way overpriced one.
@@javaman2883 - That is pretty interesting. I've never heard of the Ethernet indoors getting enough static buildup to fry ports. On outdoor Wifi access points a static build up is more common and they make shielded Ethernet cable with a electrostatic drain-wire to help siphon that off. It requires special shielded plugs with a drain-wire connection, and of course a switch with shielded ports that is also grounded through a three wire power cable or else a separate ground wire.
Just really enjoy, your content. Been a CCIE, for this my 26th year. Don't get to play in this space much and it keeps me grounded.
Thanks for covering these devices!
The PCBs appear small enough that a manufacturer could make Ethernet Switch Card in PCIe form factor, where the host could have a dedicated port via the PCIe connection and even a second management over PCIe for managed variants of such cards.
but... u could buy a 4port nic and use ur pc as a switch lmao, bought a cisco c240 m3 for homelabbing, i has 3x4Gb Nics, so theres all my vms and also serves as switch, my isp router is the Home network and from there i got 2 uplink for my cisco where all MY things connect, so i dont fck up my home's internet if i start doing anything lol
Good to see prices coming down on 2.5gE switches. I've had motherboards with onboard 2.5gE nics for the better part of a decade now, and have never used them at their rates speed. The switches were always way too expensive to justify the upgrade.
If your motherboards had Intel 2.5gE chips then it wouldn't have mattered anyways
Glad to see that everyone start to make 2.5GbE switches, but Im still waiting for cheap QNAP QSW-2104-2T clone. 2 copper 10GbE plus few 2.5GbE ones.
Agreed.
Here I am excited mikrotik announced the CRS310-8G+2S+ switch yesterday
Yea Rohit covered that on the main site. MikroTik's design is higher power/ performance but also more than twice the price. Hopefully they start shipping them soon instead of in many months.
The YuanLey, Devuaz and Vimin switches with 4x 2.5Gbe and 2x 10Gb SFP+ are probably the exact same product. The layout suggests that they're all using the same PCB inside.
THEY ARE. Plenty Chinese Manufacturers do that on Amazon/EBay/Walmart for the last 6 years. With those ridiculous names trying to sound cool for electronics.
It would be really cool if you took some of the heat sinks off and did some chip ID. It wouldn't take very long (couple seconds per switch). Thanks for the video!
Saw this video, had a nosey on AliExpress and bought a Hisource branded 4x 2.5Gbe 2x SFP+ switch for a massive £26.20. Wish me luck!
Oh wow!
@@ServeTheHomeVideo An update for you. The switch I ordered for £26.20 arrived. I can't test the SPF+, but the 2.5Gbe ports are working as advertised. Bargain.
@@GarethGoldingwere you able to test since? What are your thoughts on the unit?
Still not used the SFP+ ports, but no problems otherwise.
Mikrotik has released a video lately about their newest product which is an 8-port 2.5Gb mGig with 2x SFP+ 10Gb.
which model?
I had problems with cheap switches in the past: because of delivery-shortage of network devices, an electrician installed a cheap poe-switch for security cameras. and it took me some hours to figure out that it injected bad frequencies in the buildings power-circuits that stopped working all of the customers powerline-adapters. the errors were gone seconds after i disconnected this cheap switch. I told the customer better get a d-link or tp-link.
I already have a QNAP 2.5gbit with SFP+. What I am really interested in is a eight port multi-gigabit 10gbit copper and one SFP+ port switch. There are 2-3 on the market, but they are all $500+.
What are you doing on your network that actually comes close to saturating 8 ports of 10gbit bandwidth?
These 4+2 models are really promising - have been looking for a low wattage switch to handle just a router, APs, and a fast link to my separate home lab. These might just do the trick!
Only thing that would make them better for that use case is PoE.
That's what I did. I got one of these + an 8 port 10Gbe SFP+ switch and just stuck a twinax cable as the ISL. For < $150 total I had both.
2.5G works on most existing structured cabling I have tested where as 10G is very flaky unless you have modern cat6/cat6E or better. Also these cheap 2.5G switches seem to be much more stable and solid than connections to 10GBASET sfp+. 10G into the average laptop/desktop is very difficult to achieve (spare X4 slot for example) , 2.5G is cheap and easy. These cheap switches are a revolution for breaching the 1G barrier and I am telling everyone I know with a high performance home network to buy them (I am an ISP network architect).
Thank you for your work Patrick, and team! You are always so enthusiastic, keep it that way! I moved my home network to 2.5Gbe thanks to your video I randomly came across, now subscribed and looking forward to each new one :-)
It's pretty amazing how cheap these 2.5gbe switches are getting. Probably better to buy a mid range priced switch since its probably built with better parts and chassis. Heat is my main issue since my Network Panel is jammed packed with about a dozen devices! Great video brother.
During Prime day I saw a 2.5GbE switch, with 5 ports and 2 ports, thinking it was one like these here. When I looked at the specs, I saw that it was 5 gigabit ports, with 2 2.5GbE ports for $75 normally $110. Glad I watched this video to know that wasn't a good deal.
Happy to help! Enjoy.
Depends on what you need. I'm considering setting up a little mini-cluster where I need to hook up five to eight hand-me-down devices with gigabit and one device with 2.5G that'll have the SSD they all pull their data from. Given that none of the gigabit devices are going to saturate their links when doing CPU-bound stuff like batch thumbnailing, the concern is a cost-effective way to avoid bottlenecking between them and the machine doubling as a storage server/task dispatcher as the I/O gets concentrated, so it makes sense to have at least ONE switch in the house that has a couple of 2.5Gbit ports, five to eight 1Gbit ports, and a backplane really only needs to be good enough to allow saturating the one 2.5Gbit port in both directions.
I recently got one of those YuanLey 6-port units and I have it fully populated with a mixture of 10Gb, 2.5Gb and 1Gb connections. It works well and I got it on Amazon for $63 so I've been pretty happy with it.
👋Curious which 10g adapter did you get? Looking for a 10gb RJ45 and wondering about compatibility.
Does it still work? I'm reading the reviews, and one mentions it failed after 30 days. Another mentions that it disconnects frequently.
@@KunouJS I’m about a week in and the 2.5gb seems to work reliably so far.
Not quite the same, but I've been using a Zyxel XGS1010-12 for $150 for nearly 3 years now. It's 8x 1Gb, 2x 2.5Gb, and 2x SFP+.
It's not all 2.5G of course and won't work for everyone, but I don't think that's a common use scenario yet. So many devices won't even utilize more than 1Gb yet.
I'd like to see a version of this video dealing with rack mount devices! Thank you StH!
Great idea. Hopefully the next one will be a rack mount switch
just upgraded to a 2 gig connection, UDM SE, and U6E AP. The Vimin switch works great with an SFP+ DAC to the UDM, and the AP, pushing the full 2gig connection all the way through without issues
I got the POE version of the Davuaz 4/2 switch -- actually ended up getting 3 of them. Even though my Unifi 6 are not 2.5gb capable, I noticed a near 2x jump in throughput on wifi performance moving the Wifi APs to these and from 1gb POE switches. I think having POE switches connect to the network through 10gb helps a great deal in freeing up switching throughput. I read some reviews about other switches with the same layout -- likely same internals having some issues with both SFP ports occupied, not my use case, so I've been very happy with what I am getting. You should also test Power usage with SFP using either direct copper or fiber. SFP to ethernet is the least power efficient and those adapters can run really hot -- 80-90c is normal for some of them.
I just got this “Davuaz 2.5G PoE Switch with 8 x 2.5G Base-T Ports and 1 x 10G SFP Uplink Port” as I needed 2.5 Gbe POE for wifi 6E AP, a Mikrotik router board, and a couple raspberry pi’s. Fit great in my rack, I need to power test though.
I'm commenting just to show my support of this channel. Good stuff, and I end up buying stuff that I think comes from this guy. Its hard to find fellow enterprise guys that I can listen to for entertainment.
Just got the Davuaz 2.5 switch for 38 bucks, I'm so ready for this new adventure 😂😂😂😂
Well this video couldn't have been better timed. I just got fiber internet literally yesterday and was going to look at cheap options to upgrade my 1GbE home network to be able to handle the extra traffic from my server better.
Regarding the Vimin switch:
Recently the German RUclipsr Raspberry Pi Cloud did a review on it and did elaborate a bit on the VLAN switch.
If active it seperates all 2.5G ports from each other, but clients plugged in there could still make a connection to the 10G ports...well, at least one of them. If to both I dont know, didn't get an answer to my question about that. He's a busy man and I'm one of many, so no hard feelings.
Another point I do wonder about is how the IP addresses are handled when that switch is enabled. Or how this seperation is handled at all.
From what I know right now you better use one of the 10G ports for uplink.
The second one I use to connect my wifi 6 access point and a couple of home plugs that need 2.5 gbit. Works like a charm, the 10 gb sfp+ is really a plus when connecting the uplink port from my unifi aggregation
I’d like a tear down and see if there is anything sketchy.
Thanks STH. Looking forward to tracking down a managed 4 port (2.5gb) 1 port sfp+ unit with PoE when the wifi 7 standard is finalized for APs. Cheers.
I’ve got the vimin 4+2 with Poe. If you turn on the vlan switch the 4 Ethernet ports are isolated but they all trunk onto the sfp
While not the fanciest switches on the market, they are going to start disrupting the market for users like me with only a few devices that need the higher connectivity. Really hoping the Flex line of Unifi switches need to drop in price to become a bit more comparable. I can't imagine the BOM cost is 10X higher for a 10G switch which sells for $299 than a 1G switch which sells for $29.
Unifi still thinks 2.5G switches are "enterprise".
6 months after this review.. Found TONS of 8 port 2.5GbE + 1 port 10Gb SFP+ for around $35 and I'm looking at one for $32.50 USD w/free shipping from Aliexpress. And the reviews look legit, not bad at all
These are perfect. I want a switch to connect up from my gateway to the wireless AP's on my network. I have 3 ubiquiti AP's they are 1gbe connection but future ones wont be. I also get a 10g link back to the gateway. And its fibre so electrical isolation for upstream devices.
I bought the VIMIN one and I’m using it just find with a 1 metre Ubiquiti sfp+ DAC cable just fine
I don't understand why ppl complain about 2.5gbps ethernet, it's a standard ratified with IEEE 802.3bz, and it is absolutely great for companies that are still running cat5e, but need a network update, but doesn't have the money atm to pay for new cables all over. Sure you have to weigh the pros and cons of it would be better to go with 10gbps or even 40gbps and slowly update the cables, but I'm a network geek and I think it's a great option. The more options to choose from the better.
*but don't (because "companies" is plural)
*of if it
*from, the
Hope to see some managed stuff
The VLAN switch separates the 2.5G ports from one another. Each one can only communicate with the SFP+ ports, but not with each other.
Bought 2 of those a month ago… love em….
The VLAN switch looked interesting, wish you leaned into it.
We are going to have the full review on the STH main site. It is written, my guess is that it goes live this week but it depends on if there is any big news. If not, the full review will go live next week.
My biggest concern is still is there anything malicious in the no-name switch's firmware? The TP-Link one is probably the only one I would trust since they are a well know trusted brand.
I doubt it's a real tplink model. The box looks like a complete knock off.
In fact, I find no reference to it on tplink's site.
*well known
@@geepeezee5030 exactly, that model seems to not exist on tp link site.
Interestingly none of these models appear on taobao. On the contrary western market is being flooded by lots of variations of the same thing. I'd send some to top security researches for super-sophisticated chip-level rootkits.
Thanks for the video. It doesn't always just come down to the cheapest possible device. In the end, if you have specific requirements and need a managed switch, with proper vlan handling and configuration for example, most of what was shown here will be an immediate definitive no-go. Cheers :)
I bought the NICGIGA version of this for $56 ($69.99 - 20% coupon).
It happily moved some 4 terabytes between 250-300MBps and hasn't caused any issues for a few months.
It makes no noise (fan or electrical) that I can tell.
Unless there's some chip in there sending my logins to somebody, I don't see any problems with it.
Incorrect link for the Sodola SW. Thank you for another awesome review.
Thanks!
Lol I just ordered the recommended QNAP 4 port 2.5gbe + 2 port 10gb sfp+ the other day for double the price of these new ones, it hasn’t even been delivered yet haha. Ultimately I think I’m going to keep it as it’s still relatively inexpensive and is a well known brand, but of course this video comes out 2 days after I put off buying the switch for months 😂
I think there is still value to getting a switch that has regulatory markings and such from a bigger brand like QNAP.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo yep agreed. If the QNAP was like $300 or something I’d probably return it and take the chance on one of these, but for $130 it’s already very reasonable and as you said there’s value in more “legit” products/companies.
Good to see prices are coming down but without the most simple of things like management and VLANs they are not of much use I think.
Thanks for the video!
Do the SFP+ ports support 2.5G modules?
I am so glad I held off getting a new switch. I going grab that 8-port one. All I need now is a 6E access point that won't break my wallet.
If you've got Frontier, they just gave me an Archer AXE300 router/6e AP for free
Very nice Switch. I have a Problem with the Daisy Chain 10gbit Switches, which are not the Switches but the Cores for the Network. They are Cheap enough but on a Daisy Chain you get only 2 10Gbit inputs and lot of 2.5Gbit and since they are unmanaged you have the problem of Cascading losses. Imo the Problem is that there are no Cheap 10Gb Switches out there which matches the 2x10 4x 2.5 GB Switches. The Hasivo S1100WP-8XGT-SE costs around 4 Times of the Smaller Switches. The TP-Link 5 Port TP-Link TL-SX105 is not much Cheaper. Something like the TP-Link with 5x 10Gbit or SFP+ for DAC Cables for 150-200$ would make those 70$ Switches very viable and Intresting. 3-4 Switches Some maybe even Daisychained so maybe 4 Switched 2 Daisychained. And the 5x 10GGbit for Server/Nas Uplink would result in a Cheap powerfull Network with 5x10Gbit Edge Connections and 20x 2.5Gbit Edge Connections. Alternativly a QNAP QSW-M408-4C one less 10Gbit Port but 8 1Gbit for Appliances. Nice for a small Office with 4 Rooms and two Desks per Room. Or Homelab. But ATM the 10Gbit Switch would costs as much as all the other Switches together. Search on Aliepxress and you will be helped. Maybe a Feature about the "ONTi 8 * 10G SFP+ Switch Desktop Unmanaged Ethernet Network Switch" for 150$ 8x SFP+ 10Gbit Port unmanaged or 250 USD managed would beat the Hasivo and be the perfect core for a small office/Homelab.
One problem is that one 10GBASE-T SFP+ Copper Transceiver Module 30m cost about $80 ...
i ordered the tp-link switch for 60 bucks a month ago. i regret it now. it is now offered for 25 bucks and the SFP+ versions are also cheaper than what i paid.
Finally the review we.. Err I have been waiting for!
Super!
Really love all the 2.5GbE content, but what about some bigger switches? I would need a 16-port or 24-port for my home network. Unfortunately your guides only cover up to like max 8 ports.
We recently did a MikroTik 2.5GbE switch. Rohit also has a number of higher port count switches he is testing.
It would be nice if you would include link aggregation as a check box in your reviews and review pages on your site. Basically, I'd like to know when devices support link aggregation or not.
Link Aggregation or Port Bonding is why I haven't much considered replacing my gigabit ethernet network with 2.5Gb yet since my server and main workstation are both using dual, bonded links to my switch which supports LA.
If any of these cheap switches supported LA and there were cheap dual port 2.5 NICs available, I'd consider upgrading but at this point I'm waiting for cheap 10Gb before I make the jump.
Usually you need managed switches for that. At the same time, with SMB3 multichannel being supported by most Windows/ Linux desktops and most NAS distributions at this point, you can just use that with unmanaged switches and get similar performance.
@ServeTheHomeVideo Good point, though Link Aggregation works with everything, not just SMB.
BUT, having just watched your hasivo 10Gb switch review, it's hard to consider 2.5Gb without smart features or LA as a serious upgrade option anymore. IMO, you're now better off holding off on upgrading until you can save up the difference for the hasivo 10Gb switch, at which point you end up with a faster, more feature filled, managed switch.
The $150-200 price difference makes it to sweet a deal to pass up.
Awesome stuff I just wish there would be an open protocol for SDN that manufacturers actually use :)
Found one for 40 Euro's on Aliexpress.... OK I'm going to get that one :) Great video thanks a bunch
I have two horaco 2.5gb, I am planning to use the 10G SFP to connect them together
Do you have jitter measurements in your test data? In my experience this can be a problem with cheap switches with latency sensitive applications. Like in home game streaming for example.
I have witnessed the same issues when testing performance for the same application, game streaming. Cheap switches can have up to 5ms latency, but a higher grade switch should be
We do a lot of VoIP work and this is exactly why we don’t touch these.
As neat as these are, I would have no use for them. Wish I did, but nope! Maybe in the future. Still cool to look over them.
The goal is that when people do need them, we have them reviewed on the STH main site. It is a LONG process :-)
I wondered: are these units identical, or slmost identical? I really wanted to see inside all of them, but you only showed inside a couple of them. You showed that the performance was identical, and they look similar, but do they also have the same board design, same chips, etc.?
Thanks for the great review. this hit the nail on the head as I'm currently shopping to upgrade my home network.
Horaco is also one of the brands it seems, they have this same switch under "New Arrivals". I was so close to pulling the trigger on their 8x2.5GbE+1x10G-SFP model, looks just like the Yuanley model but was also available L2 managed.
Anyone who complains that these are more expensive than the old 5-8 port Netgear / etc that everyone loves...
Give it time. I remember paying ~$110 for a 5 port Netgear 1Gb switch. Hell, I remember paying like $60 for a 5 port Netgear 10/100 switch a long time ago.
Great segment, all of your explanations are very easy to follow. When you brought up Port Mirroring, a security question came to mind. There are so many manufacturers or Network switches, some appear to be USA companies, and others we have no idea where they are from. I have seen videos where the same electronics appears to be in different packaging with different company names.
Question: How secure are Network switches, and how can we know if any of our network traffic (personal data) is being “forwarded” without our knowledge to a person or company to be used for nefarious purposes. Is there a way to determine if this is being done?
On unmanaged switches it is hard. If you tried forwarding all traffic people will see 2.5Gbps+ streams easily. These do not have enough CPU power to do deep packet inspection and select which packets to send.
Should do a thorough test on these... wonder if these cheap switches drop packets?!?
4+2 Yuanley sounds amazing... just 1 10gig port doesn't make senses for me... I would want 10gig for both server + workstation, rest do fine on 2,5...
Has anyone checked for possible security risks arising from these off-brand switches?
I'm a bit worried about backdoors and whatnot.
With known brands, there's a smaller chance of that happening, and at least you know who to blame.
With MiktoTik CSS610-8G-2S+IN being $119 with nice features such as SNMP, I'm not sure I should accept the security risk for $50.
It is un-managment switch, so the security risk is happend only if you physically break-in. This Microtek stuff is managed and use an own OS.
@@OldLordSpeedy *These are unmanaged switches
*risk can only happen
*MikroTik.
*uses their own
The issue is actually reliability - something very difficult to test in these short videos.
We usually have these running with iperf3 traffic flowing for weeks before we do the video. I guess the question is that if these cost half or a quarter of the price, is it something you self-warranty
Thanks so much for the reviews and this series!
Thanks for spending a great deal of time end effort on these reviews. Please can you detail your throughput testing methodology, as those figures are of limited use without more detail, I also didn't see this mention on the website:
- RFC2544 ?
- Small ~64KB packets?
- IMIX packet size spread?
- Large ~1500KB packets?
- Single unidirectional or simultaneous bidirectional throughput tests?
I'd love a cheap 2.5GbE switch with 10Gbase-T uplinks. I don't use SFP+ on any of my equipment right now so it's kind of annoying to have to buy a SFP+ to 10Gbase-T converter even if they're not that expensive.
I wish you'd include unit heat during your iperf tests. The MokerLink I have runs very warm.
At these prices I don't need vlans, I can just run a stack of real lans
8:32 An RLT network IC with 4x 2.5 GB port, an extra Realtek IC for the fifth 2.5 GB IC and 1x SFP+ slot.
3:31 An RLT network IC with 4x 2.5 GB ports and 2x SFP+ slots.
Is this a coincidence?
I have the variant with 5x 2.5GB and 1 SFP. I can only recommend it
10:35 The 8x 2.5 GB + 1 SFP variant: 4x the first IC, 4x the second IC, both use an internal connection to each other, then the SFP+ remains free.
something like the sodola would be great if it had a POE-in port to power the device.
How many switches should we look for bare minimum?
1 main comp
2 main tv
3 secondary tv
4 stereo receiver?
5 raid drive
Any more uses I'm missing?
Depends entirely on your personal situation. I have oscilloscopes and power supplies connected to my switch, but that's obviously a niche thing. Maybe you want to play around with a raspberry pi one day. Maybe you'll get a network-attached printer. I dunno.
Nice, looking at the POE ++ model. Tk U for sharing
Thank you, Mr.Xi.
The Mikrotik 8 port SFP model is a much better route to go.... really the only reason I'd go with this is if I had to retrofit with old wiring.
Sounds like a security nightmare
Coulda swore we stopped using 'disrupt' unironically in 2017. Anyway, did you do any testing to see if these switches open ports and funnel traffic back to China servers? That's my concern about cheap stuff, exchanging cheap price for data siphoning.
An "unmanaged" switch such as the ones presented here really has no possibility to do that. It works on the L2 level (MAC addresses) which provides no connectivity to the outside world.
With a "managed" switch (which has an IP address at L3) that would be possible. You would need to configure your router not to allow access to the internet for the switch (or not configure a default gateway in the switch) for some basic protection.
How about units w/POE+ which should be pretty standard for home/small business use, as we are going to be seeing a lot more POE smart devices.
"Very similar..." it's the SAME SWITCH :D
OEM's exists, and many companies are just re-branding the same design with different font colors ;)
fyi though on cost, 1Gb is actually 1.28Gb bidirectional, 1.5Gb is 2.56Gb and not bidirectional. one of the reasons 2.5g chips are so flaky is probably that they're cheap hacks of standard 1Gbe chips. It's actually the same bandwidth, just with the normally bidirectional bandwidth now switching between send and receive instead of being dedicated to it, so you're a lot more likely to actually saturate the link.
So, basically, we're still really only in the gigabit generation in consumer hardware.
Did you ever make a completion video on the fiber upgrades you did to the lab?
No! I was thinking about doing that after the move to Scottsdale. Not sure if folks want that kind of content