Consumer 10GbE discussion

No complaints from my side either.

 

It's amazing isnt it, when you ask for support for a company and realise that against all the odds you're actually talking to a real engineer not a callcentre weenie with a script. Especially when you aren't a big dollar customer.

I got rather shocked back in 2004ish when I put in a feature request to autodesk for inventor pro, had a phone call the next day from one of their software leads (in singapore from memory?) clarifying some points, and three months later when the next version came out bam it was there. Us with our all of five licenses for it at the time.

I've had some pretty stellar support out of mikrotik before too.

 

I plugged in the 10 gig Copper SFP+ module that I mentioned above which should use only 1.6 W up to 30 m.

I unplugged it about an hour later and it was barely warm to touch but had just been sitting there in a switch without a network cable in it.

The reason I had not gone any further is the AQ107 PCI Express 4x (v2 or v3) card I purchased on AliExpress prevented the machine from posting. The boot logo shows. However the computer will not proceed and delete does not open the BIOS.

I adjusted the few PCI-E Bios settings I have (with the card out) and even unplugged my video card in case it was creating competition for PCI lanes (went back to onboard graphics). Made no difference.

Only thing I didn't try was locking it back to PCI Express 2 now that I think about it, but it was just set to Auto and should be able to get that right. I think I will return it.

 

Bugger. Got another machine to test in? I've accumulated a few different AQC107 BIOSes over the years. I bought an Asus branded card for one specific feature that Mellanox doesn't have. Wanna guess which brand has been flawless and which hasn't?

 

No, could phone a friend though. That said if it doesn't work in a bare gigabyte AM4 motherboard by locking it up at boot it's not great.

Speaking of boot, I wonder if I should disable any prospect of it trying to boot over network on the mobo bios. I did fiddle with the default settings but never clicked selected disable. I think it's unlikely to be the problem. It does a bit of a boot cycle before locking up and when the logo screen still says press delete to enter BIOS, that should work. It's just so time consuming because I can't change the BIOS settings with the card in and then I need to boot to make sure the BIOS settings haven't broken the machine some other way.

Edit: I think I might try a dual port Intel x550 card from an eBay seller. Quite a bit more money but quite a bit more fun. It does appear this is a current chipset too?

Edit 2: went with a Trendnet TEG 10GEC TX 10gig copper pcie x4 card. It is also a Marvell solution but I think I'd have to get the heatsink off to find out which one. I bought version 3 which has just been superseded. Can get over 900 megabytes per second transfers to my windows machine. BROADCOM BCM84891 SFP+ module is not uncomfortably hot to touch over 37m which is great.

 

Just sneaking into our thread with the two 10GbE ports in SFP+ form is another one of those AliExpress switches. This one has 8x 2.5Gb + 2x 10Gb ports, whereas we normally only get 1x 10Gb port with 8x 2.5Gb due to the internal two 10Gb chip design doing the work, does this one have three 10Gb chips, or maybe it is sharing the second 10Gb chip? IDK, but at $70aud delivered I thought I would get some and have a look.

It can be found here;
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007513652026.html



I've bought that^ brand (label) of switch in the past and while they make a bit of heat I haven't had either of them fall over so I thought what-da-hell.

 

I bought ones with dual SFP+ ports so I could loop through (2+4). I thought it might be fun to try and find one on AliExpress that did not have a plastic inset in the fascia consistent with the better mainstream brands. Took a while. The switch works well.

Let us know how yours goes First thing I do is put the power supply in the e-Waste and buy something locally certified with a decent provenance.

 

It's been a hot minute since worked in the industry but back in those days Gigabyte boards were by far the worst at gracefully dealing with add-in cards BIOS/ROMS. Then again they might have gotten better when switching to UEFI.

 

Aetherone Thanks. I think I buy Gigabyte out of habit these days. That said, as I detailed above, a different card worked fine Once upon a time motherboard brand matted massively but is it still the case? Maybe next time I'll read some reviews try and find some anecdotal evidence about stability and compatibility.

 

Has anyone squeezed 10Gbe into their ITX build with one of these? Before Aetherone warnings bells go off it is running the new AQC113 chip and not the AQC107.
$141 delivered from AE. https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005007499639661.html

 

While I am happy with the results from my AQC107 based gear, my PCI-E ethernet adaptor puts out some heat. For this formfactor in an ITX case something more efficient would be the way to go. Faced with a related problem I bought a QNA-T310G1T thunderbolt unit (mine is SFP+ version though)

 

I've got some TB3 to 10G copper units and they still put out heat, everything pushing through copper will do, all you are doing is moving the heat source away from the computer.
I'll have to chase up some more field usage info on the AQC113.

 

Well they're here and they work, but I wouldn't recommend hooking up a pair of 10Gb copper transceivers to it as it only comes with a little 12vdc x 1amp PSU. I did test it with one copper transceiver in it and a few 2.5Gb nodes but I wouldn't suggest buying it for that and to be fair they do market the SFP+ port as meant for fibre transceivers.

The power meter showed about 2.5 watts draw without anything attached to it as it turned on.

While we are on PSU(s) if you aren't an experienced overseas shopper and if you can't order yours with a proper AU plug, order a UK one instead as they are the most solid fit into travel adapters like these which will cost you about $4 each (free del with Prime);
https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B09VDKYVG8



The little hardware port isolation switch does its job and keeps things uncontactable on its own port VLAN should you need it. For a $70 switch that does 2.5Gb/s, it's a nice touch.

Iperf3 showed a solid 2.37Gb/s in both directions (using -R), while a bulk file copy over an SMB share sat on 281MB/s throughout 30 GigaByte transfer.

(edit here) One thing I forgot to add is that it's a decent metal case with wall-hanging openings in the back of the case.

The order took 10 days to get from the date the order was placed.

Happy hunting.

 

Shoot and here's me tossing the (possibly) cheapest Chinese junk power bricks and using ones from old devices purchased locally. Although everything in my rack needing +12v or +5v draws from the SFX PSU powering the core server...

 

If you bought one of these, in the specs does it state the speeds SFP+ support?
ie 10gbe, 5gbe, 2.5gbe and 1gbe or just a subset like 10gbe and 2.5gbe or 10gbe and 1gbe

would be nice if it supported all 4 gig speeds


PS: I have a AQC113 10gbe card https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006724639150.html it didnt get too hot in normal use. My AQC113 is much much cooler than my intel x540-t2 and on par with mellanox connectx-3 (used with 10m OM2 AOC cable)

 

I bought three.

It states on the cover page of the User manual that it is a 2.5Gb / 10Gb Switch, but I tested it at 1, 2.5 and 10Gb.
*I have no 5Gb/s gear to test that.*

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Do you have a link to the aqc107 you bought?

 

It was this one, including shipping at the time I was in for just under 260 Australian dollars including $9 shipping.

Edit: It was a very good price at the time. StaticIce appears to have better prices currently.

 

Oh didnt realise we were talking about TB unit.

 

Oh sorry. You want a link to the card that didn't work for me? That was this one. No dramas with the return