[AusNOG] Tech Q: Looking for Cheapest 10G Switches for Hobby Lan.

[Mark Smith]

On Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:34:58 +0930
Matthew Moyle-Croft <mmc at internode.com.au> wrote:

> Have you looked at how much bandwidth you actually need?
> 
> This maybe one situation where throwing bandwidth at a problem doesn't really help as more is never enough.
> 


I agree here.

Fundamentally what problem are you trying to solve? It sounds to me
like you're wanting to facilitate faster i.e. less time consuming file
transfer/sharing. More bandwidth is the general solution to that,
however you need to watch out for changing where the bandwidth
bottleneck is occurring.

Specifically, do the PCs you're intending to plug 10Gbps NICs into have
available PCIe port that'll support at least 10Gbps throughput onto the
motherboard? Standard PCIe x1 slots only support 2.5Gbps throughput. So
you'll need at least PCIe x4 or greater slots available to get 10Gbps
network throughput.

And then, if the data sources or sinks are more conventional desktop PC
hard drive setups, then they'll likely be the new bottleneck. SATA 3
only goes up to 6Gbps, so you'd need at least two SATA 3 devices,
with data being sinked or sourced across both of them to achieve 10Gbps
network throughput.

The ring suggestion somebody made earlier would have a similar number
of issues. 

So basically, I'd think even if a 10Gbps is cheap enough, you're
likely to have a lot of unused and never to be used 10Gbps network
capacity. To maximise the 'bangs per buck', you might be better off
leaving the links to the PCs as 1Gbps, get a switch with at least one
10Gbps uplink, and then build a server to act as the file sharing
point, with a 10Gbps link to the network, plenty of RAM for file
caching (16GB? 32GB?), and a high performance storage system (RAID
configured for performance, SSDs etc.) that can deliver at least 10Gbps
of data to/from the network - so that the network is again the
bottleneck.


> Consider, if you spend money on capable switches, of using some of the queuing and QoS stuff in the switches to "reserve" bandwidth for gaming and/or other latency/time sensitive tasks.
> 
> Also, you can build a big, fat, network for these events, but really, how much do you need?   Can you build two networks for less money, one for gaming, one for "other" but avoid having the expense of 10GE?
> 
> These maybe too hard or not feasible, but consider other options.
> 
> (I also accept that a 10GE network maybe a selling point for a LAN party and so desirable from that point of view).
> 
> MMC
> 
> 
> On 16/07/2010, at 12:49 PM, Trent Lloyd wrote:
> 
> > I've been looking at this for RFLAN in WA
> > 
> > 
> > Juniper seems reasonably good value for having uplinks @ 10GE.. but the killer in price is the 10GE aggregation switch, 100 might not be so bad but for us I need 300-400 ports so a big 20-40+ port 10GE aggregation switch is required and not cheap.  but mind it's not just base switch cost, but also transceivers and cables you have to worry about.
> > 
> > 
> > Another option we were considering to reduce cost was trunking between stacks of 3200/4200s.. we run rows 4 switches long stacked, 6 rows.. run a daisy chain of trunks @ 10G between each row. 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > another another option is to get a bit fat center switch with a big backplane and lots of ports, and cable out patch panels rather than switches to each person.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Trent
> > 
> > 
> > On 16/07/2010, at 10:58 AM, Jason Bailey wrote:
> > 
> >> +1 for the Juniper EX3200s. They are excellent and relatively inexpensive.
> >> 
> >> Jason
> >> 
> >> On 16/07/2010 10:56 AM, McDonald Richards wrote:
> >>> J EX3200s are probably the cheapest option I can think of for 10G trunk
> >>> facing and GE to clients. I have also heard H3C are pretty competitive
> >>> but have not actually used their gear.
> >>> 
> >>> Macca
> >>> 
> >>> *From:* ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net
> >>> [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] *On Behalf Of *Sean K. Finn
> >>> *Sent:* Friday, 16 July 2010 12:19 PM
> >>> *To:* 'ausnog at ausnog.net'
> >>> *Subject:* [AusNOG] Tech Q: Looking for Cheapest 10G Switches for Hobby Lan.
> >>> 
> >>> Hi All,
> >>> 
> >>> Some of our staff run a hobby LAN one day a month that attracts about
> >>> 100 players for 12-24 hours.
> >>> 
> >>> Currently the guys are running multi 1GB trunks, some 6GB trunks between
> >>> switches and 4GB trunks to servers for the day, but there has been talk
> >>> of wanting to experiment with 10Gb gear at a hobby level.
> >>> 
> >>> The budget isn’t huge, maybe about $1,000 per month to spend on gear,
> >>> but LAN days are usually good test beds to skill up and play with this
> >>> kind of gear.
> >>> 
> >>> My Question is :What’s the cheapest and nastiest 10Gb consumer grade
> >>> gear, if it exists yet, that anyone knows about?
> >>> 
> >>> Both switches and cards.
> >>> 
> >>> Some of the guys mentioned http://www.extremenetworks.com/ , not sure if
> >>> this is nasty enough though?
> >>> 
> >>> Cheers,
> >>> 
> >>> Sean.
> >>> 
> >>> 
> 
> 
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