[Guide] What equipment to buy for Sonic 10 Gigabits Fiber

[thejimmyz]

Hello fellow Sonic user (Sonicers?).

I pre-ordered a TP-Link Deco BE95 in January (arrived a couple of weeks ago) and this thing is a beast!
https://www.tp-link.com/us/deco-mesh-wi ... deco-be95/

I did not really need it but I wanted it. You know, the need for speed.

Previously, I already a mesh, the Deco XE75 Pro "only" had a 2.5 Gbps WAN port and since I am lucky to have the mind blowing Sonic 10 Gbps I was eager to get a bit more. Also I have the mesh using a wireless backhaul which was giving me 500 Mbps in the back of the house when connected to the satellite unit. Already very good, especially compared to others configs I tested like a single Asus AXE-16000 router or a Eero mesh, but I had wild dream of breaking the 1 Gbps barrier from there...and guess what? The Wifi 7 protocol made it happen

So is it pricey? Yes... Overkill? I want to believe it is not. Just maximizing my internet connection and future proofing my WiFi.

Attached:
- a speedtest from the TP-Link app, running on the main node
- a fast.com speedtest from my laptop behind the second node. A 2014 MacBook Pro, 802.11ac max PHY 13000

[oshanruiz]

Thank you so very much for giving me another "out of scope" option to consider bringing "in scope" ^_^

[joeyyung911]

You said "pricey" and got me curious....HOLY SH..!!

[starslip]

I don't think I've seen it mentioned yet but I have been quite happy with my tp-link axe300 that I've had for 4 months. I appreciate that it has both rj45 and sfp+ 10 gig wan ports, so I didn't have to use anything other than a standard cat 6 cable between it and the ONT, and it has an rj45 10 gig lan port (as well as a 2.5 gig and multiple 1 gig). When connected to a PC with a 10 gig ethernet card I was able to get speedtest results of 8+ gbps. Wireless speeds with devices that can access wifi6 have been great as well

Only downside is it only has the 1 10 gig lan port, so if you want multiple machines to have 10 gig access you'll also need a switch (which are also still expensive for ones with multiple 10 gig ports)

[mkobb]

Relatedly, I'm actually kind of disappointed in my real-world downloads. I frequently download very large files from a service that is hosted on Akamai's CDN. On my AT&T fiber, I would get ~800 Mbps from the CDN. I was expecting great things from my Sonic fiber (although I knew I would be limited to ~1Gbps by the hardware doing the actual download on my end.) But my downloads measured only about 550Mbps on Sonic. I ran speed tests to verify that there wasn't some sort of temporary issue with the connection, but I was able to max out my UDM-SE's internal speed test at 6 Gbps. So the raw connection is fast; it seems like there's some kind of limitation where Sonic's connection to Akamai is not as fast as AT&T's was.

Following up on this, the service that I was referring to above switched to CloudFront. Performance seems to be good with Sonic. The device that is doing these downloads seems to be reaching its maximum download speed of ~750-800Mbps, and I used my Mac with the 10Gb Thunderbolt adapter to perform a raw test against the CloudFront CDN and saw 2.7Gbps, which is plenty quick.

I'm not sure what to say about the performance I was getting from Akamai. I don't have any way to re-run the test anymore, but I'm given to understand that Sonic does have direct peering with Akamai so it should have been fast. It's possible that I was seeing something that was either transient, or not actually tied to Sonic's performance.

[ryanflynn]

10gb fiber install is scheduled for Monday. After reading everything here, I ended up pickup a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro Special Edition, 10gb SPF+ wan in from the ONT and SPF+ with an ethernet converter into my Mac Studio via cat 6e. I'm just going to use our old wifi 6 mesh system via one of the 1gb ethernet ports on the DMPse as the only computer than "needs" speed is my Mac Studio.

I'll report back with speed test results!

[bernaards]

10gb fiber install is scheduled for Monday. After reading everything here, I ended up pickup a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro Special Edition, 10gb SPF+ wan in from the ONT and SPF+ with an ethernet converter into my Mac Studio via cat 6e. I'm just going to use our old wifi 6 mesh system via one of the 1gb ethernet ports on the DMPse as the only computer than "needs" speed is my Mac Studio.

I'll report back with speed test results!

The UDMSE is my setup also. Don't forget the SFP / SFP+ to RJ45 Adapter. The 10G version is 65$ on the ubiquity website. Depending on where you live, Central Computers (4 stores on the peninsula 1 east bay) has Ubiquity gear as well, and appears to carry the Adapter in stock.

[ryanflynn]

Nice, yeah I picked up two ubiquitous 10gb versions from bhphoto. Any issues with hear for you? What kind of speed are you getting?

R

[bernaards]

I get about 6 GB down and 4 up. This is with thread management off. Way, way more bandwidth than I need.
There is some distance between the ONT and the UDM (connected with Cat8 cabling).

[ryanflynn]

Right on, I'm getting around 8000mbps down and 6500 up with cat6e running around 20ft. I'm going to play with settings, but there is no way I can saturate this connection. Absolutely mental.

R