What's a decent 2.5gb NIC for reasonable monies?

digitalwanderer

digitalwanderer

Legend
Just upgraded our xfinity gateway from the XB7 to XB8 and should be getting 2+gbps. Problem is we only have 1gbps NICs and switches in the house but since this gateway has more RJ-45 spots I got my PC hooked direct to the 2.5gbps.

Looking for a good/cheap NIC to use it with. Started looking and realized it's been a long time since I looked at networking equipment. I sort of like this TP-Link 2.5GB PCIe Network Card (TX201) for $27us but is it really worth it over one that's half as much?

Thanks in advance and all input is greatly appreciated.

Oh yeah, is 5e good enough cable or do I need cat 6? Not sure what I'm using.

EDITED BITS: Fixed the second link
 
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Got the tp link and it came a few hours ago. Amazon is spoiling me.

Gonna dust out my box, toss it in, and see if I can bust the 940Mbps limit I'm at.
 
homerdog said:
What kind of router/switches you got? I've found 2.5/5gb uptake to be very slow compared to gigabit back in the day.
Click to expand...

From his initial post It's an Xifinity XB8 (possibly provided by his ISP?).

Overview of Xfinity Gateways

Learn more about wireless gateways and download the user guides.
www.xfinity.com www.xfinity.com

It's an all-in-one modem (DOCIS), router and wifi access point. One of the ports on it is 2.5GB.

We're getting slower uptake because 1Gb over 100Mb was basically "easy" and so costs were relatively low with more demand (better economy of scale) due to no alternatives and need for more speed as 100Mb was not good enough. While pushing past >1Gb for home is "hard" and so costs are relatively higher and there's also less demand (less economy of scale) due to the growth in preference for wifi and 1Gb being good enough basically.
 
What they said. All the networking stuff in my house is 1GB 'cept one port on the new gateway and the NIC in my PC. Everything else is 1GB, too costly to upgrade it all right now and there is no real need.
 
homerdog said:
What kind of router/switches you got? I've found 2.5/5gb uptake to be very slow compared to gigabit back in the day.
Click to expand...
There's an enormous variety of inexpensive 2.5gb switches all over Amazon nowadays (although I like to buy mine direct from the manufacturers via AliExpress) - all dirt cheap, some with a few 10G SFP+ ports to play with as well, in a dizzying array of managed vs non managed, PoE vs non-PoE, etc.

My recent pickup was a 4-port 2.5G PoE model with 2 10g SFP+ ports, web managed with full VLAN support for my homelab.
$59usd shipped without PoE or $79usd with PoE support.

Best part, completely fanless, and I measured power draw of ~2.1w at idle.
www.aliexpress.com

Smart Web Managed 4-Port 2,5 Gbit/s RJ45-Switch mit 2x10G SFP+ 10 Gbit/s - AliExpress 7

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com
www.aliexpress.com www.aliexpress.com
 
T2098 said:
There's an enormous variety of inexpensive 2.5gb switches all over Amazon nowadays (although I like to buy mine direct from the manufacturers via AliExpress) - all dirt cheap, some with a few 10G SFP+ ports to play with as well, in a dizzying array of managed vs non managed, PoE vs non-PoE, etc.

My recent pickup was a 4-port 2.5G PoE model with 2 10g SFP+ ports, web managed with full VLAN support for my homelab.
$59usd shipped without PoE or $79usd with PoE support.

Best part, completely fanless, and I measured power draw of ~2.1w at idle.
www.aliexpress.com

Smart Web Managed 4-Port 2,5 Gbit/s RJ45-Switch mit 2x10G SFP+ 10 Gbit/s - AliExpress 7

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com
www.aliexpress.com www.aliexpress.com
Click to expand...
Yea you can definitely find them. I'm just saying, 2.5GbE hasn't become the defacto standard the way gigabit did so quickly back in the day. An average switch is still only gigabit, and these ISP provided routers often have only one 2.5gb port if you're lucky.

Most of the SonicWALLs I install for small businesses have no 2.5GbE ports at all. Nor do the basic Ubiquiti switches we use like this. Hell even the Pro doesn't have it. It's still treated like a higher end feature.
 
So coincidentally I've signed up for a new ISP (trial phase still) that's given me the same XB8 with just their branding. My line speed is only 1000/200 so I can't test the 2.5Gb port though.

Going to compare it with my current fiber line over the next few days and make a decision. My non tech friends already think I'm weird running more than one PC at home, what will they think when I tell them I have 2 internet lines :ROFLMAO:
 
XB8s wireless is insane! Getting 1,029/28.6 Mbps off of it on my Pixel 7.

I hate the asymmetrical extremes of the down/up but it's always been that way around us.
 
digitalwanderer said:
XB8s wireless is insane! Getting 1,029/28.6 Mbps off of it on my Pixel 7.

I hate the asymmetrical extremes of the down/up but it's always been that way around us.
Click to expand...
My AT&T fiber is gigabit both ways. I really wish they offered this service to businesses. To get 1Gb/1Gb for businesses still costs thousands of dollars around here.

BTW I had a customer get DDOSed the other day. AT&T said they could handle it for a one time fee of.... $60,000. They said if the customer upgraded to DDOS protection for an additional ~$2,500/mo, the $60K fee would drop to $54K. What a deal!
Dunno if that's normal practice now, but I worked for a small telephone co-op and I am certain they didn't charge for basic DDOS protection. I've called other ISPs to report attacks and they just dealt with it, no charge.
 
digitalwanderer said:
XB8s wireless is insane! Getting 1,029/28.6 Mbps off of it on my Pixel 7.

I hate the asymmetrical extremes of the down/up but it's always been that way around us.
Click to expand...

Not sure why you're getting so much worse upload on that compared to wired?

With my 1000/200 coax/cable line - A54 on Wifi 6 is 700/200 with line of sight to the XB8 and 350/70 in the worst location (albeit I live in a condo, but there's a washer/dryer stack in between 2 in this test). Hardwired is 1000/200 (slightly, can't remember I think 1020/210?).

300/300 fiber line - A54 on wifi 5 (AC 5ghz) is 160/310 (yes the wonders of wifi) with line of sight (but the router is in a closet so not a realistic usage scenario) or 185/200 in an ideal usage scenario. 140/100 in the worst case scenario (only plaster walls in the way). Wired is 330/330.

Fiber router/modem is in a closet (fiber line entry point) while the XB8 is in the living room (as that's where the coax line is).

As for early latency testing -

1) General latency seems to be about 8ms higher (hard to pin down, could be 6 or 10) with +/- 4 jitter (some spikes up to 8) vs. +/-2 on fiber.

2) Interestingly though to the place I remote in often from latency is actually maybe only 1-2ms higher? (I need to test this more later today) just with more jitter. Might be because that location uses the same cable/coax ISP.

But since my fiber term is up, the fiber offer is to either downgrade to 250/250 and still pay $130 more over 2 years compared to the coax/cable line or upgrade to 1000/1000 and pay $180 more over 2 years (not sure if I can negotiate for them to also upgrade the modem/router combo).
 
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