What you need to know about Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax)

Re:What you need to know about Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax) by nixgeek on Monday December 26, 2022 @01:48PM (#34140514)

One of the more affordable options nowadays is the Ubiquiti Flex XG [1] ($299) for a 5-port unit with 4 being 10GE. I’m using lots of their Switch XG 6 PoE [2] ($599) since it can drive 5GE ports on my APs and supports 802.3bt (which is required to power them up without limitations!).

Lots of prebuilt PC systems are coming with 2.5GE NICs - “build your own” and it feels like most motherboards are now 2.5GE? Upgrading existing to 2.5GE is pretty cheap (~$30 USD), even via USB adapters [3].

To me, I think it’s fine with NBase-T that the switches be 10GE and the clients negotiate at 2.5GE or 5GE, although I’d note that both Mac Mini, iMac and Mac Studio can now be OEM specified with 10GE NIC for I think $100 additional.

[1] https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/usw-flex-xg_ds

[2] https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/us-xg-6poe_ds

[3] Plugable 2.5G -https://a.co/d/hjV8LTd

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Re:What you need to know about Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax) by wkat4242 on Monday December 26, 2022 @02:04PM (#34140669)

For me that's not affordable. I'm using 1GbE 8 port semi-managed switches from TP-Link that cost me €30 a piece 10 years ago (and are still the same price these days). Semi-managed because they only support some features but all I need is VLANs and port mirroring.

€300 for 5 is a fortune for me :(

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Re:What you need to know about Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax) by nixgeek on Monday December 26, 2022 @02:28PM (#34140908)

Only way I know to get $/port much cheaper than $50-75 is to pick up a used Arista on eBay, there are typically 48-port 10GE models going for ~$400-500. That's what I use to drive 10GE ports where I don't need 802.3bt.

There are significant tradeoffs that you may not tolerate:

(1) They are very noisy (vs. the Flex XG which is fanless) so if your "Tech" is anywhere near your living space, this may be unworkable;

(2) They consume lots of power and also don't do 802.3{af,at,bt} for PoE either, you can solve PoE using an injector (for a few ports), a midspan (for more ports) but note that injectors/midspans usually don't support NBase-T and if you want the combination of 2.5/5/10GE and PoE you might be back to buying a specific switch which can do that;

(3) Learning curve is steeper than unmanaged or most semi-managed switches and you likely need to be comfortable with serial consoles to get them configured.

With all those and likely more tradeoffs considered, they are ~$10/port!

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