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

10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module(gilesthomas.com)

52 points by gpjt 3 hours ago | 41 comments

PaulKeeble 1 hour ago |

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.

drnick1 59 minutes ago | |

What for? Ethernet is what you ultimately need, because that is what devices such as PCs and WiFi access points use. I experimented with SFP for a while, but ultimately concluded that it isn't worth the effort to add SFP cards to PCs now that that low-power 10G Ethernet chips like the RTL8127 are available. High-end motherboards already have 10G Ethernet and soon lower-end models will too. 2.5G is practically standard already.

thefz 37 minutes ago | | |

Ever ran a single mode bidi fibre in a conduit? Push a wire puller, cleave and terminate ends, done. Zero effort unlike pulling a jacketed CAT7 cable, zero worries from electrical interference too, future proofing up to 40GBps. I ran double strands in my house so in case one breaks, there's another.

The floors where native fibre is not needed have a cheap ethernet media converter from fs.com, everything else (3 floor switches) are interconnected with 10Gbps SFP+ modules and 2.5G ethernet for the hosts.

All done thanks to the great https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-08-09-fiber-link-ho...

(if you are reading this, I owe you several beers)

collabs 1 hour ago | |

I would be grateful and happy to have gigabit Ethernet with cat 6A in every room instead of this single landline phone jack and/or coaxial cable. The most important thing is a good conduit in place when the house is built.

cbdumas 1 hour ago | |

There are probably still a lot of cases where you would want PoE though right? Cameras, WAPs, etc.

Hasz 1 hour ago | |

you should be putting in conduit -- either smurf tube, emt, sch40, or similar. can pull whatever, and more importantly, if a cable is damaged by an overly zealous gorilla during installation, it can easily be fixed and replaced.

zer00eyz 1 hour ago | |

> the off ramp is clearly happening for ethernet

You should be running both.

If you are being smart about it your planning distributed switching (fiber to media boxes with power).

From a pure networking stance, fiber is the way to go. But POE continues to have more and more uses (doorbells, cameras, sensors, lighting controls).

tcdent 1 hour ago |

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.

iknowstuff 57 minutes ago | |

Wish apartments would come with those

wingmanjd 2 hours ago |

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

kohlschuetter 2 hours ago | |

You can also use a BananaPi BPI-R3 for reprogramming. And you can “upgrade“ 10 Gbit/s DACs to 25 Gb/s. Details here https://kohlschuetter.github.io/blog/posts/2026/03/22/unlock...

hdgvhicv 2 hours ago | |

I tend to use fs.com optics, but I’ve heard in high rates (100g plus) that flex optic tend to be more reliable

secabeen 2 hours ago | | |

FS has a reprogrammer, called the FS Box. Works well.

theMMaI 2 hours ago | |

fiberstore has them as well, plus you can buy modules, DACS and everything programmed to the vendor of choice, including different vendors on each end

Especially handy for specific Intel NICs where they refuse to link up if the module isn't in the driver-allowed list and those modules are hard to come by

happyPersonR 1 hour ago |

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 :)

poisonborz 1 hour ago |

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

Havoc 59 minutes ago | |

I've got a mix of both running here and definitely prefer the SFP+ part of the world. Couple of neat tricks it enables like the new "invisible" fiber - looks the same like fishing line basically. Unless you're 30cm away and actively looking you can't see it.

Replaced a wifi bridge that way...30m run across multiple rooms & hallway...zero drilling.

undersuit 1 hour ago | |

I have a RTL8127 NIC from Aliexpress that uses 1 PCIE 4.0 lane, finally a use for those 1x slots and it does pretty good on 10G speeds.

drnick1 54 minutes ago | |

I wish multiple-port 10G PCIe cards with this chip were available. I would immediately upgrade by Debian router from 2.5G to 10G. At the very least I would need a dual NIC.

boredatoms 28 minutes ago | |

and the QSW-L3208-2C6T-US is a cheap 8port switch

goolz 2 hours ago |

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

gh02t 1 hour ago | |

I've bought a good bit of 10Gtek stuff over the years. Not sure to what extent they actually are designing their products vs. just acting as a reseller (I think the latter), but either way everything I've bought from them has been quality kit that lasted for years, at a great price.

debayande 2 hours ago |

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

qurren 2 hours ago | |

I'm also using the WAS groupon stick with a huge fan on it. I really wish they would build a proper fan and cooling duct into the stick and power it with the stick itself. It very much seems like a half-assed solution.

debayande 1 hour ago | | |

I'm considering that and the Nokia G-010S-A on my Uni-Fi Dream Router 7 (my area is serviced by multiple wholesale network access providers who operate either over GPON or XGS-PON, hence the need for both). However, I've heard enough horror stories that I'm a bit concerned about temperature issues...

colechristensen 1 hour ago | |

fs.com displays wattage ratings on all of their products, pick low watts.

https://www.fs.com/c/gpon-xgspon-sticks-5607 (I think this is what you're looking for?)

cliftonk 1 hour ago |

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.

jauntywundrkind 2 hours ago |

Recommendations for 25Gbit next please!

mittensc 2 hours ago |

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

Tuna-Fish 2 hours ago | |

For a lot of people, because they already have copper in the walls.

You are correct that 10GBASE-T really shouldn't be the default choice, fiber and DAC both have advantages over it. But compatibility is important, and there are a lot of situations where 10GBASE-T is just more convenient.

seabre 2 hours ago | |

For connecting via say a Macbook Pro, there used to not be Thunderbolt 4 SFP+ interfaces. So, you were pretty limited to some ethernet SFP+ module that you hope would actually work.

Also personally, if you can get away with a copper DAC, I would rather use that instead of fiber because you don't need any special modules.

nubinetwork 2 hours ago | |

DAC cables can get expensive, and nobody knows what to buy when it comes to fiber, unless you're running entire spools of the stuff inside buildings... OM3/OM4/OM5? Single mode/Multi mode? LC/SC? Regular people don't know this stuff...

baby_souffle 2 hours ago | | |

> Regular people don't know this stuff...

Regular people also are not buying DACs.

If you are in the line of work where you need to know what SFP is and the difference between DAC and Optical, a quick "what's OM3 vs OM5 and when do I use either?" to your favorite LLM/Search engine will get you sorted.

simoncion 35 minutes ago | | |

> Regular people don't know this stuff...

Regular people don't know whether to get Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, or Cat7. So... yeah.

> ...OM3/OM4/OM5? Single mode/Multi mode? LC/SC?...

My answer is OM4, Multi-mode [0], LC. OM3, 4, and 5 will all work at 10gbit for any run you'd expect to make in most houses. I chose cable grade based on what was in stock at the local store. I chose connector type based on what fit into my NICs. I went with multi-mode because it was cheaper than single-mode and I wasn't going to be making multi-km runs.

[0] That's what the "M" in in the cable designation means.

drnick1 50 minutes ago | |

Access points, for example, expect PoE.

jmyeet 2 hours ago |

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

xenadu02 1 hour ago | |

I don't think that's quite true. Unifi 10GbE switches are cheap enough I have a 24 port PoE+++ one in my house and my 3 main WiFi APs are 10GbE connected. My MBP uses a 5Gbps Thunderbolt adapter that runs relatively cool as well. All of this is over the existing Cat5e wiring.

I'd say 10GbE has arrived. It is relatively cheap, most of the time works over existing 1GbE cabling, and gracefully degrades to 5/2.5/1Gb based on conditions when it can't reach 10Gb.

Yes to be 100% guaranteed of getting 10Gb even in bundles of 100 cables running over noisy fluorescent ballasts to a full 100m you need Cat6A but in many environments Cat5e or Cat6 is more than sufficient. It works so well if you fail to get the full 10Gb I humbly suggest you re-do the terminations on both ends before considering replacing the cable.