Why do people want 10gbe?

[dancingsnails]

What use is there for 10gb internet - other than the coolness factor? I'm currently on monkeybrains waiting for sonic's fiber build out to reach me. My reasons wanting to switch are primarily because of reliability concerns, and secondarily because monkeybrains downgraded the Siklu connection that I paid them a bunch of money to put up a few years ago to a Mikrotik dish which has dropped my upload speed by about a factor of 10 to 40mb. I occasionally notice this.

I've been looking at something like an er4811 that would support 10gb, but I have a hard time justifying anything faster than 1gbe.

Is anyone getting anything useful out of their 10gbe connection other than nice scores on speedtest?

[primes]

in the brief few months i had it, i didn't even have the equipment to utilize the full speed (though i had every intention of getting it, i'm a bit of tech junkie when it comes to some things) but the more practical reasons are:
compared to literally every other ISP, sonic is an anomaly in pretty much every aspect i've ever had to deal with. (i've even worked for an ISP that resold sonic's service once upon a time)
but what it really came down to, even only though my equipment at the time could only utilize 1Gbs, that sub 3ms ping with virtually 0 jitter...i've never seen such a thing, it's essentially WAN at LAN performance. and i like to play fighting games, so i notice every dropped frame.

[dancingsnails]

That seems reasonable. At 10gbe, all the switching should be that much faster too - so latency to Sonic's peering points should be low.

For now, I'll just stick with our debian/vyatta based edgerouter.

[jfa_roy]

My internal network is ready for 10 Gbps (at least from the router to the switches to my workstation -- all Ubiquiti gear with fiber links) and I will utilize it when it arrives. Sonic is delivering 1 Gbps to my home today, and I cannot wait for their 10 Gbps service. I work from home and I am regularly on video calls, while also streaming video (for work -- video streaming is part of the technology I work on), while also downloading or uploading large files (disk images, debug traces of various kinds, telemetry data, machine learning models and weights), all of which are several tens to hundreds of gigabytes each. I need bandwidth to make those uploads/downloads go quickly, low latency, and reliability (low packet drops, low jitter).

[tarzxf]

My criteria was not-xfinity, the multi-gigabit speeds were a nice benefit. The reliability has been stellar, as the local FB group has noted multi-hour xfinity outages while Sonic remains operational.

I already had the 1.2Gb service from xfinity, with 2.5Gb switches and routing in place for that; adding a 10Gb switch and router was a quick way to utilize the full bandwidth (and a Mac Studio with a 10GbE port).

When I went to the Xfinity store to cancel service, they asked "What are you gonna do with 10 gig?"

"Anything I want."

[primes]

That seems reasonable. At 10gbe, all the switching should be that much faster too - so latency to Sonic's peering points should be low.

For now, I'll just stick with our debian/vyatta based edgerouter.

nice! i also run vyOS, a custom build. and used to use an edgerouter lite, but that thing, as great as it was, it's age was starting to show


you can tell it's custom because neofetch. style counts.

[bgamble]

I wanted Sonic. 1Gb would have been fine, but 10Gb is what they built.

[artakamoose]

Unless you have an edge case like jfa_roy, there's very little on the internet right now that utilizes a full 1G much less 10G. The biggest question from a customer standpoint is should you buy the gear necessary to route 10G in your home. 1G equipment is ubiquitous and cheap. The same can't be said for 2.5/5/10G equipment. Then there's the issue of cabling. 2.5/5 will work fine over Cat 5e for the most part. Officially, 10G requires a minimum of Cat 6 but it still works over shorter runs of 5e; not to mention that fact 10G is still very power hungry. Running fiber for 10G is arguably the most ideal solution, but that all depends on the cost and hassle of doing so. When you add up the router, switches, cabling, and other stuff you need to hit 10G...things start getting expensive. So, unless you have a discreet need for it like jfa_roy or just want to impress your friends and neighbors with a speed test, it doesn't make a lot of sense to go out and buy shiny new, expensive equipment to do it right now. Still, you can find used stuff out there cheaply if you want a fun project!

With that said, I totally understand why Sonic rolled out 10G instead of 1G. If I recall correctly, unlike consumer gear, there's little to no cost penalty for them to roll out 10 vs 1. Also, it future proofs their network and gives them a leg up on the competition. Lastly, offering everyone 10G at the same rate greatly simplifies their pricing structure.

[soniclvr]

I move big files for work often (+1TB) and 10gbe would be very useful. That said I'm super happy with 1GB symmetric and it's just very reliable and fast. Used to have MB and this is not on the same league speed and reliability wise.