Welcome to the first video in our Ten Gigabit Home Area Network Series.
I'm going to cover five major points why it is finally time for ten gigabit networking
at home, and the small business office.
I'm going to be brief and realistic as possible.
Then in the following video I'm going to show you how to do it.
It's essential to watch this video so you understand important concepts necessary to
blow the doors off your tired one gig networking gear.
So let's get started.
What: Ten Gigabit networking has been around for
a while now, actually since 2002 when 10Gb fiber was introduced.
Then in 2006 SFP+ Direct Attach Copper (DAC) hit the market and grew in popularity due
to it being cheaper, lower latency, and lower power consumption.
Also in 2006 10GBASE-T Copper was released, which requires the use of a category 6, 6a,
or 7 twisted pair cable.
These cables showed a slightly higher latency and higher degree of power consumption, in
addition to the bulkier cable profile.
Many believe these factors are what led a greater adoption of Direct Attach Copper.
Although, as switch vendors work to lower the power consumption of 10GBASE-T, and pricing
comes down, many will start to consider 10GBASE-T over Direct Attach Copper as it's more flexible
from a structured cabling point of view.
So currently it's a matter of low latency and low power (Direct Attach Copper) versus
longer runs, and custom cable lengths by terminating them in-house (Cat6, 6a and 7).
Why: Why do I need a ten gigabit network for my
Home Area Network (HAN) or Small Office Home Office (SOHO) you say?
Well there are many reasons and I'll list a few of them here for you to chew on.
Obviously it's not for everyone.
That's a decision you will have to make for yourself.
I'm just presenting the case why I feel it's finally time to hit the "10G Turbo Button"
on your pent-up PC.
First, I'll start with the 800 pound gorilla in the room, or should I say 1/10th pound
SSD in the PC.
Solid State Drives have revolutionized storage transfer speeds across the consumer spectrum.
Add to that PCIe SSD, mSATA, m.2 and the many other SSD based technologies to follow.
Let me put it this way; A single Western Digital Green drive can already max out a one gigabit
network link!
What?!?
You say, that's crazy talk?
Nope, Western Digital specs for a Green drive currently show sustained transfer speeds of
123 MB/s for a 3TB model.
123 MB/s is 984 Mb/s.
There's goes your one gig link up in smoke!
Second, RAM matters!
Have you ever noticed on the vendor spec sheets, sometimes they list the buffer to host transfer
speed separate from the drive to host (sustained) speeds?
Well if we look back at the line "buffer to host" that same Green drive says 6 Gb/s.
Really?
Sweet!
Oh ya, and you have your operating system caching files on top of that too!
And here's the kicker, your operating system is not limited to 6 Gb/s.
That is a limitation of the SATA III protocol.
What I'm trying to say, is that your various levels of cache provide an incredible boost
on top of your storage drive speeds.
So let's review, we are currently somewhere north of 6 Gb/s transfer speeds.
Third, there are a lot of miscellaneous considerations depending on what tech you employ at home
or in the small office.
For example, are you using RAID-based storage to serve up your data?
Depending on how the RAID is implemented it could be pushing a ton of data, but you'll
never see the speed because you are capped at 1 Gb/s (125 MB/s).
But what about Link Aggregation (LAG) or Teamed NICs?
I should be able to combine multiple interfaces to get more than 1 Gb/s, right?
Yes and No.
There's a big caveat here.
You still can't exceed 1 Gb/s if you are only connected using a single session.
Now, if you are transferring using the Link Aggregation pipe and someone else makes another
connection across the same pipe, they will have access to another slice of that 1 Gig
aggregate.
Keep in mind protocols play a major role in performance and network utilization.
After all, this is a complicated topic.
You didn't think this was going to be easy, did you?
In upcoming videos, we are going to be walking you through a few strategies to squeeze the
remaining bits from this sometimes ugly tech lemon.
Who: Okay, now we are going to talk about who would
benefit from 10 gig connectivity.
I'm not going to spend much time on this topic since you probably have a good idea by now,
if you are interested in exploring what 10 gig performance can do for you.
This video series is targeting your average geek, small business (SOHO), technology enthusiast,
gamers, and really just people that enjoy working with stupid fast speeds.
If setup correctly, you'll be transferring files pointlessly just to partake in the sheer
power and awesomeness that is 10 Gig networking.
When: When should people demand 10 gig at home?
Right now!
Do you like massive amounts of performance even if you can't justify it?
Absolutely!
Let's review.
The Direct Attach Copper and 10GBASE-T standards, along with available hardware, have been in
place since 2007.
That was 8 years ago!
Seriously, why am I not using this in my business or at home?
Eight years is a long time in the IT world, and a lot can happen in that timeframe.
Point in case, it would take 14 hours 39 minutes to transfer 6 TB over a 1 Gig connection.
With a 10 Gig connection that time would be reduced to 1 hour 28 minutes.
If you are wondering, I pulled these figures from an online calculator.
Of course these numbers are based on pure calculation, but you get the point.
Where: Alright, now you've decided you want a piece
of this delicious 10 Gig pie?
I'm going to talk about what ingredients to use, and where exactly to use them.
You will need to identify the location in your network where you stand to gain the most
benefit, and work outward from there.
Using my Home Area Network as an example, I identified three main systems that would
see substantial gains by migrating to a 10 Gig pipe.
My workstation, VMware server, and Network Attached Storage (NAS) are poised to take
full advantage of 10 Gig speeds.
My workstation is using SSDs, the VMware server has local SSD storage, and my NAS is using
software RAID in the form of ZFS.
Now that I've identified what systems will be upgraded to 10 Gig, I need to consider
connectivity.
The goal is not to replace your existing 1 Gig connections with the 10 Gig links, but
instead add a 10 Gig port to each system.
What we want to do is create a separate "storage" or "high speed" network in effect.
This will simplify troubleshooting, and make implementation easier in a number of ways.
This will eliminate path issues and isolate your high speed network, keeping chatter to
a minimum.
Join me in the following video, where we start with a simplified configuration.
You only need two hosts to talk, and this is known as peer-to-peer.
I will circle back around, in a third video of this series, and cover the above scenario
where I described connecting three systems together.
In that video I have an awesome tip to share.
If you want to keep things affordable and upgrade your geek badge in the process, make
sure you continue to the next video in this series on the topic of ten gig peer-to-peer
networking.
Don't forget to like this video, share it, and subscribe to get the follow-on videos!
Your support is tremendously appreciated, and I always look forward to your comments.