[jimmaswell]

Gigabit seems undersized for a home LAN these days. 2.5Gb equipment isn't significantly more expensive and any Cat6 should handle it. Fiber is cheap enough too if you want some 10Gb devices. Only expensive thing is SFP ethernet adapters but you can put an SFP NIC in your PC and bypass the problem.

I've been using this equipment in my home LAN for a mix of 10Gb fiber, 2.5Gb ethernet, and a small number of devices that came with 10Gb ethernet ports (Tyan motherboards) get SFP ethernet adapters.

Unmanaged 4x2.5Gb ethernet 2x10Gb fiber - https://a.co/d/08J99UjH - I daisy chain these with fiber connections to have a kind of 10Gb backbone that terminates at my main PC with the fiber NIC.

Managed 10x fiber - https://a.co/d/06927QeJ - This is the most economical 10Gb fiber switch I could find at the time and it's had no problems for the low price. Has a serial management interface in addition to web. Extensive management capabilities. I've used its link aggregation successfully.

Managed 4x2.5Gb ethernet 2x10Gb fiber - https://a.co/d/0fud7jzF - First hope off my modem before the fiber switch, good management capabilities.

It's kind of funny, my LAN is all random Amazon brands people would warm against relying on, but I picked out ones that have been solid and reliable for years of use. No need to break the bank if you find the right stuff.

[Aurornis]

> 2.5Gb equipment isn't significantly more expensive and any Cat6 should handle it. Fiber is cheap enough too if you want some 10Gb devices

You don't need Cat6 for 2.5G. Regular Cat5e that has been installed everywhere for years is fine for 2.5G.

Cat6 is enough for 10G ethernet within the lengths you find in a typical residential house. You don't need fiber.

For short runs even 10G works on quality Cat5e.

I think some home lab fans overestimate network cabling requirements. With Cat6 I could string a cable from one end of my house and back and not even be close to breaking the spec for 10G. For 2.5G ethernet cheap Cat5e will get you anywhere you need to reach in a residential home.

[jimmaswell]

- Equipment with 10Gb ethernet ports is much more expensive than similar fiber equipment, and it runs hot at the ports - 10GBASE-T RJ45 runs at 2.0W – 5.0W per port, often enough to burn your finger. Especially if something's going to be inside your walls, generating less heat is a plus

- Fiber's somewhat easier to run since it's lighter; it's easier to break but the bend radius is much more forgiving than you might assume. I have yet to damage a fiber cable myself.

- More electronic isolation between equipment is always a benefit, which fiber naturally gives

The tradeoffs lead me to prefer running fiber for 10G which then branches out to 2.5G ethernet for most equipment in the house, but if I didn't have these Tyan boards prompting me to try out 10G equipment then I would probably stick to 2.5G ethernet for everything for simplicity. If you're aiming for 10G then I don't think ethernet would make sense in most situations for both upfront cost and heat generation/power usage.

[AshamedCaptain]

The biggest problem with fiber is that you cannot do cable work without equipment, which partially neglects the advantages of the thiner wires since you have to always account for the plug.

But it is true that, otherwise, and in a surprising turn of events, fiber is cheaper to run than 10GBASE-T.

[matt-p]

I think there's probably two ways to address this.

1) Most likely we make self retracting reels, or just very easy cable/slack management and sell fixed length cables with a hard connector one end and a snap on connector the other end (https://youtu.be/6dop-9_0_g8?t=43&si=DdAXLMU_A7wTuCTn). That solves the problem of accounting for the plug in drilling holes. We could easily do this tomorrow on 2mm white 1f or 3mm 2f cable. This size is important as it is about the maximum you can just use adhesive to stick to the top of skirting.

2) we use plastic optical fibre and build a whole bunch of infrastructure around that. That is much easier to terminate, cut and safer to use but a load of work will be required.

[NekkoDroid]

> Fiber is cheap enough too if you want some 10Gb devices.

The problem with Fiber for now will remain that so few consumer devices can actually connect to it without first converting to RJ45. You are p much limited to some enthusiast networking gear and server gear and everything else needs you to convert.

I recently had my families home ethernet situation upgraded and we went with Cat8 for now (it wasn't meaningfully more expensive to doing any other Cat cable all things considered). It is compatibile with networking stuff that is commonly available today and hopefully in the future some switch will appear to make full use of it (I am slightly sceptical, but I assume 10G will at least still be seen over Cat for consumers).

[ragall]

Cat8 is very rigid and hard to work with. For my house backbone I used multi-mode fiber (OM4) cables which are much easier to work with and support up to 100 Gbps for 150m (https://www.fs.com/blog/om4-multimode-fiber-faq-highspeed-co...).

[matt-p]

Cat5e/Cat6 is extremely easy to work with and does 10G at 30 metres. I take the view that's enough for me on any one link.

[matt-p]

I'm not sure if we'll see >10G over twisted pair/CAT but I'm sure we'll definitely see 5G and 10G baseT become far cheaper with 2.5G the baseline (e.g standard on cheap things like raspberry pi).

Base level Mac studio is already 10G as standard and it's only $100 extra on a mac mini.

Long time until 10G per device isn't enough at home.

[NekkoDroid]

I also doubt above 10G will be seen at least on consumer grade hardware, but until we start seeing SFP+ or similar on consumer hardware (and not just enthusiast and server hardware) there is a realistic chance. But that is so far out in the future making predictions on it doesn't make sense.