I’m looking into switching from 1gig Ethernet in the network to at least 2.5gig for my core switch. I’d love to be able to do intervlan routing with a layer 3 switch but am unsure whether it’s worth my time and effort.
Should I instead just setup my OPNsense with LAGG of 3-4x 1gig ports and just continue routing VLAN traffic with it?
I know it’s not optimal, but I’m also looking to do things relatively within budget. I don’t want to spend $500+ on a 2.5/10gig layer 3 switch… especially but if that’s my options I’ll consider it.
Edit: I made my decision. I found the Brocade ICX6610-48P. It ticks almost all the boxes that I’m looking for.
- more than 4x 10gbps SFP+
- layer 3
- has plenty of expansion for both SFP+ ports and for Ethernet ports.
I know that it doesn’t have 2.5/5g speeds natively, but I’m understanding that if I set the SFP ports to 10G but have transceivers that are capable of negotiating 2.5 or 5g speeds. Then it still works. Currently, I’ll continue using 1G speeds on my mini pcs, but my NAS and my proxmox node that hosts OPNsense will be 10G, even though I won’t necessarily need it since I’ll be switching to Layer 3 routing on the switch and not OPNsense. Eventually, I’ll play around with some 2.5/5g USB dongles for the mini pcs since they aren’t compatible with any additional modules for Ethernet. I think it will eventually completely replace my SG2428P since it doubles the amount of ports and has POE. Now it’s just the uphill battle to learn a new system and integrate it with my network and cause multiple outages at the same time 😂
Have you checked out mikrotik? I’m not sure if you can flash to them, but they come with routeros a linux kernal based os mikrotik developed. It’s insanely customizable and feature rich. They are starting to dip toes in enterprise gear as well. Not sure about switches that size but I got a 4 port 10gb MGBASE-t switch with a dual arm chip and a 1gb poe management port. Has the routeros license too( all hardware comes with a license for routeros in perpetuity) all for $190.
I’m certainly not against anything. After doing some more searching and looking I’m realizing that for the vast majority of my network, 1g speeds are fine. It’s the truenas and proxmox hosts that I really want to have 2.5/5/10g speeds.
So I think I could get away with something like an 8port 10g switch that I have as the storage layer and then use my 1g switches for all else.
If I’m thinking this through properly, if my opnsense router is on one of those proxmox nodes and is connected at 10g speed, then the router no longer becomes the bottleneck for like 90%+ of my vlan traffic because most of it is going between those nodes above.
I’ll take a look at the microtik and see what might fit the bill.
Thank you
I am fairly new to networking but that sounds correct with my thinking. I’m actually after a super similar setup. I got a router that can easily handle 1gb internet which is the best I can get anyway. The router I got has 5 gb ports, I’ll use that for my actual Internet connections. On my homelab network side I’m just going to use that 4 port 10gb Switch for communication between the nodes themselves which is where I care/need faster transfer speeds. If/when I use all those ports I’ll upgrade the switch.
Yeah I think that this would help immensely by going with a smaller 10gb switch for the “core” network and then having all the lower bandwidth needs on larger switches. I think that’ll end up with a better experience overall.