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 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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