# Recommendations on a 10G Network Adapter



## The German Highlander (Mar 22, 2018)

I am building a system for a client and am looking for recommendations on a well-supported 10G Ethernet adapter. For those of you who have built systems for environments that use 10G Ethernet, what has worked well for you in the past?


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## flipper_88 (Mar 22, 2018)

Stick with the Intel Pro 1000MBPs serries of nics.


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## usdmatt (Mar 22, 2018)

Not that I've used any of them but I would expect the Intel cards supported by the ixgbe() driver to work fairly well.

Netflix use Chelsio & Mellanox. These seem to be fairly enterprisey - I've never seen one or even know where to get them, but they appear to be well supported.  Edit: see cxgbe() or mlx5en() for the cards supported by the FreeBSD drivers.


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## ondra_knezour (Mar 22, 2018)

This presentantion may be useful for you - Tuning FreeBSD for routing and firewalling

(TL;DR - Chelsio, Intel, Mellanox, avoid Emulex)


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## Phishfry (Mar 23, 2018)

What kind of interface are you looking for?
SFP is more the industry norm but those modules are so pricey and the cabling cost of fibre$$.
It depends on the length of run really. I think RJ45/10GBASE-T is OK for under 25M run.
The cost of commercial 10G switches does not seem to be coming down very fast.
I considered building my own amd64 10G switch they cost so much.

The Chelsio's T420's are supported as are the T520's.
Looks like the newer T6225 is supported too.


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## usdmatt (Mar 23, 2018)

> The cost of commercial 10G switches does not seem to be coming down very fast.
> I considered building my own amd64 10G switch they cost so much.


"Enterprise" 10G switches are getting cheaper but still a lot of money. If you don't require enterprise there are a few options though. Netgear have some reasonably priced 10G kit. Their higher end networking kit is actually fairly solid although I can understand people avoiding it, especially for more critical situations. There's also some cheaper Mikrotik gear that has 10G, including some really cheap options if you only need a couple of 10G ports. (For instance they have a switch listed at $199 with 24 1G ports and 2 SFP+ 10G...)


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## sko (Mar 23, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> SFP is more the industry norm but those modules are so pricey and the cabling cost of fibre$$.


10G SFP+ transciever have become dirt-cheap - they used to be way over 300$ just over a year ago, now they are available for <50$.
Copper cabling should be avoided unless you are definitely stuck with it and are prepared to fight the gremlins you will sooner or later encounter with legacy copper cabling at >1GBit.
For patch cables even OM4 LC/LC is cheaper than cat7 today. Installation cabling even considering the splicing cost fibre is also often cheaper than copper after a few dozen meters, especially taking into account the much higher shielding standards needed for 10Gbit.

When deploying the first 10G equipment I'd always take the chance and just cap usage for copper infrastructure at 1GBit and roll new cabling infrastructure for everything >1GBit. The inital cost for the initial equipment might be higher, but on the long run this is the much safer and future-proof option. Also the availability and cost of copper SFP modules is getting worse and their power requirements are insane - An 48port switch fully equipped with copper SFP modules easily qualifies as a fire hazard.
Another major advantage: in relatively short time you have very distinct cabling for your server/network infrastructure (fibre) and client cabling (copper) - this flat out eliminates all sorts of human-induced errors.

Regarding 10GE switches for non-enterprise use: If you are in the US there are tons of cheap Quanta LB6M available (~300$ for a 24p L2/3 switch!), which can be upgraded with Brocade firmware. These switches were used as TOR switches within the infrastructure of a pretty big company and have been decomissioned as they were EOL by the end of 2017, so they are easily available for a bargain and perfect for another few years in a home or lab network.


As for the original question: Chelsio seems to be the "best" choice, followed by mellanox and intel. Always have a look at the hardware notes [1] and driver manpages for specific chipsets and possible quirks.

[1] https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.1R/hardware.html#misc-network


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