Decently priced 2.5Gbe NICs are one thing but we really need companies making cheaper switches and building it into routers more. Once switches become cheap and routers have more than one, this'll be an obvious and easy upgrade for many home networks 🙂

alexrose1uk:

Decently priced 2.5Gbe NICs are one thing but we really need companies making cheaper switches and building it into routers more. Once switches become cheap and routers have more than one, this'll be an obvious and easy upgrade for many home networks 🙂

Well, for home routers, I don't think it's all that necessary. Their main job is to provide internet to the network, and most people don't have an iSP faster than 1Gbps. Of those who do, you don't necessarily want 100% of that bandwidth going to the same computer; sometimes it's good to have others on the network to have consistent high performance. For switches though, I agree it's about time we start seeing cheaper ones. I wouldn't mind going to 2.5 or 4 for my home network but I'm not willing to spend the money to upgrade everything. For now, 1Gbps has been "good enough". What I care most about is whether my network is a bottleneck for the things I'm trying to do, like stream videos. It's not, so, upgrading is just simply a nice bonus and not a must-have.

I have two TP-Link 2.5 Gbps cards since 2019. They look exactly like this in size, without the shroud. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001531290740.html So, they added some plastic box thing to charge double for it, or what's the story behind this "release" ?

I agree we need cheaper switches - but the bigger item for me, we need consumer devices to get off of 100mb. Yes, I know not many devices need more now - but its so irritating that new devices are still limited. (Yea, talking to you Mr 3rd gen fire tv cube)

Anyone knows what chipset is used? Another Realtek 8125 or other?

Marios145:

Anyone knows what chipset is used? Another Realtek 8125 or other?

Yes, RTL8125 is in all of them independent cards. Only some motherboards have the Intel i225

wavetrex:

Yes, RTL8125 is in all of them independent cards. Only some motherboards have the Intel i225

There are plenty of Intel i225 cards out there https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003532918695.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003533018920.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005004678867769.html https://aliexpress.com/item/4000148568525.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005004828289372.html and many more

schmidtbag:

Well, for home routers, I don't think it's all that necessary. Their main job is to provide internet to the network, and most people don't have an iSP faster than 1Gbps. Of those who do, you don't necessarily want 100% of that bandwidth going to the same computer; sometimes it's good to have others on the network to have consistent high performance. For switches though, I agree it's about time we start seeing cheaper ones. I wouldn't mind going to 2.5 or 4 for my home network but I'm not willing to spend the money to upgrade everything. For now, 1Gbps has been "good enough". What I care most about is whether my network is a bottleneck for the things I'm trying to do, like stream videos. It's not, so, upgrading is just simply a nice bonus and not a must-have.

It's becoming all the more necessary, in the UK for example BT are trialling 1.2 and 1.8Gbps fibre speeds. I realise that's top 1%, but the point is, historically your LAN speeds have exceeded your internet connectivity speeds. We are now appreciably reaching the point where it could be the other way around, and you ALWAYS want available overhead, both in terms of throughput and processing. More NICs are always good, but 2.5Gbe switches at affordable prices are definately needed. My and the wife's main machines have had 2.5Gbe for a few years, but I'm not paying exorbitant rates to connect them, which is all the more frustrating as we actually do have a home server, and especially if we're doing larger backups, more speed is always beneficial, as even a decent peformance HDD can outstrip the data speed of Gb LAN, at least for larger continuous files. Kinda hoping there might be some Black Friday deals but not expecting it.

coth:

There are plenty of Intel i225 cards out there

Interesting. That wasn't the case last time I checked (about one year ago). I guess i225 got cheap enough for them to use it in these ultra-low-cost devices.

schmidtbag:

Well, for home routers, I don't think it's all that necessary. Their main job is to provide internet to the network, and most people don't have an iSP faster than 1Gbps. Of those who do, you don't necessarily want 100% of that bandwidth going to the same computer; sometimes it's good to have others on the network to have consistent high performance. For switches though, I agree it's about time we start seeing cheaper ones. I wouldn't mind going to 2.5 or 4 for my home network but I'm not willing to spend the money to upgrade everything. For now, 1Gbps has been "good enough". What I care most about is whether my network is a bottleneck for the things I'm trying to do, like stream videos. It's not, so, upgrading is just simply a nice bonus and not a must-have.

Sorry, but that's wrong way to think. For many smaller homes, specially apartments, router IS the switch. Eg routers usually have 4-5 LAN ports and WiFi built-in. But currently most ISPs will just throw in one with 1 Gbps and b/g/n WiFi. So if you want to add 2.5 GbE to your LAN - buy a switch. But that switch is connected to 1 GbE port on router, or you need to bind multiple ports. Same with WiFi, buy a WiFi 6 or 6E AP and single client could be topping 1Gbps, so those APs go with dual GbE or more recently single 2.5 GbE. So if you want to connect that to rest of network you'd be buying switch AND AP ?? Again, similar with many home servers and NAS devices. IMHO, no, actual routers that have multiple 2.5 GbE LAN ports AND WiFi 6 / 6E is only sensible way forward for home networks. Either that or stay at 1 GbE and WiFi 5 (ac). Yet if you try to find a cheapest (edit: multi-port) 2.5 GbE router you'll be paying through the nose... Starting at about 350$ in US, so think 350€ +20% with VAT in much of the EU, but that's just starting point, with 400/500/600$ being more common. Plus "common" is a sort of wrong word to use here, with just a few models that have 2 or more LAN ports faster than 1 GbE. Weird thing is that cheapest I could find is sort of best IMHO, ASUS with 8x 1 GbE + 2x 10 GbE + WiFi 6, flexible port configuration, and all that for "just" 350$. But ASUS is far from cheap brands, so OEM white-box models should be possible for way less. Are there any? Not that I know of. So yes - we do need cheaper and better routers. (Plus - agree with earlier comment that points that historically your LAN always outstripped WAN speeds, no reason to change that anytime soon)

coth:

There are plenty of Intel i225 cards out there https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003532918695.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003533018920.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005004678867769.html https://aliexpress.com/item/4000148568525.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005004828289372.html and many more

keep in mind, these vendors lie about the chip on the card. a card sold as i225-V might actually have an i225-it on it, this means drivers included with the OS might not work.

LuxZg:

Sorry, but that's wrong way to think. For many smaller homes, specially apartments, router IS the switch. Eg routers usually have 4-5 LAN ports and WiFi built-in. But currently most ISPs will just throw in one with 1 Gbps and b/g/n WiFi. So if you want to add 2.5 GbE to your LAN - buy a switch. But that switch is connected to 1 GbE port on router, or you need to bind multiple ports. Same with WiFi, buy a WiFi 6 or 6E AP and single client could be topping 1Gbps, so those APs go with dual GbE or more recently single 2.5 GbE. So if you want to connect that to rest of network you'd be buying switch AND AP ?? Again, similar with many home servers and NAS devices.

You're making a lot of assumptions here. First and foremost: if your ISP connection isn't above 1Gbps, then that's all your router needs. As far as the ISP is concerned, there's no point in using faster ethernet ports on the router since it's job isn't all that concerned with LAN traffic. Sure, it'd be cool to offer something faster, but considering 99% of people will not benefit from it, the extra cost just doesn't make sense. Anyone who cares enough is better off just getting a separate switch. Remember, your ISP's connection is your total bandwidth. It has to be split among all devices, so as far as the internet connection is concerned, there's no point in going faster than gigabit. That being said, let's say your ISP goes up to 1.5Gbps: it isn't necessarily desirable to have >1Gbps ethernet ports on your router if you're expecting multiple devices to be calling for data simultaneously. If you've got someone on your network torrenting something, someone else is doing a live stream in 4K, and someone else is playing a game, you are better off having each user with a slower connection than your ISP's peak speed, because that ensures each user should have enough bandwidth to not see interruptions. If each user got 2.5Gbps then the torrenter could potentially soak up all the bandwidth, causing the stream to stutter and the game to lag. This is very typical of how many businesses are set up. It's pretty rare for a single user to have any benefit of having >1Gbps for internet speeds. Remember too: just because your connection is blazing fast, doesn't mean whoever you're connected to over the internet can keep up with your connection. The main benefit of having such speeds is for simultaneous user activity. As for Wifi, I'm not entirely sure about the latest spec, but generally speaking, the bandwidth is halved for each device transmitting simultaneously. So if your router is 1Gbps, that's only for a single device. It will not provide 1Gbps per device. So, it hardly matters if your wifi router is connected to gigabit ethernet. The only time it really matters to go above 1Gbps is to improve the speed of your internal network. So unless you've got a home server or a NAS, you do not need anything faster than 1Gbps, which is why most home devices don't go any faster than that. If you want your home server to go above 1Gbps to the outside world and there is no modem that will allow your server to do that, well, that's deliberate - this is why ISPs have plans for businesses.

IMHO, no, actual routers that have multiple 2.5 GbE LAN ports AND WiFi 6 / 6E is only sensible way forward for home networks. Either that or stay at 1 GbE and WiFi 5 (ac). Yet if you try to find a cheapest (edit: multi-port) 2.5 GbE router you'll be paying through the nose... Starting at about 350$ in US, so think 350€ +20% with VAT in much of the EU, but that's just starting point, with 400/500/600$ being more common. Plus "common" is a sort of wrong word to use here, with just a few models that have 2 or more LAN ports faster than 1 GbE.

Aside from everything I already said, I also prefer wifi not be included in the router. Wifi is much more quickly obsoleted. My router/modem combo has built-in wifi, which is not only slow (802.11n) but it's old enough that the connection is really unstable. I had to buy another wifi router, and I don't really have a good reason to buy a new modem. In hindsight, I'd rather have had a cheaper modem with a separate wifi router. I do agree it is stupid that multi-port 2.5Gbps is so expensive. I understand why 4 or 10 would be, but 2.5 doesn't have that much stricter of tolerances than 1.

Sorry, but you are the one making a lot of (bad) assumptions. By your logic, if my house has 60Mbps all my devices should have 10Mbps and 100Mbps LAN is already an overkill. Good for you if that's your way of living, but some of us actually use our LAN for ... You know... Local Area Network stuff, copying files, doing backups, moving data... If all you do is game and browse web (which is essentially your main assumption) then we can go to 100Mbps and this whole topic should be erased.

I think it's fair to say current home networking devices are designed around wifi and nothing else. Take the hugely expensive asus router listed today: it has 2x 10gb ports, 1x 2.5gb wan and 4x 1gb lan. This makes absolutely no sense at all in a router that costs ~$£€700, but if they won't include at least all 2.5gb in something that expensive what are the chances for anything else? Unlike the shift from 100mb to 1gb (this had nothing to do with internet speeds) it just feels like the obsession with wifi has killed off any chances of having something similar happen with >1gb. TP-Link as an 8 port 2.5gb switch for $200, but that's still more expensive than it should be as this is basically the price of 8x NICs (switch is also Realtek). Zyxel has one which retails for around $150 and regularly goes for less, but it also runs a bit hot. Personally I got a Zyxel switch with 2x 10gb (my primary machine and server), 2x 2.5gb (DIY router is all 2.5gb ports) and 8x 1gb (covers everything else) for $150. This allowed me to simplify my network setup, but is an obvious compromise over something with just 2.5gb/10gb (cost here would be $400+).

Astyanax:

a card sold as i225-V

Official vendors on Ali wouldn't lie. Only thing can happen that employee can mix up and send you RTL8125 card instead, as they have identical design and packaging. That kind of rare mistakes happens in american stores as well. Unofficial stores with little sales and unknown sources might do that.

Astyanax:

keep in mind, these vendors lie about the chip on the card. a card sold as i225-V might actually have an i225-it on it, this means drivers included with the OS might not work.

you also need to make sure it's a i225 V3 and not V1 or 2 as they have problems within the chip stopping them from reaching those 2.5Gbps speeds if going with TP-Link be careful of what you buy take their TP401 10Gbps NIC it took me having to flash the firmware with latest one from Marvel and using Marvel's latest driver to get it running right because TP-Link doesn't give a rats butt about selling you something that has problems OTB and then fail to help you when you complain to them about it not working as it should

I think V1 and V2 were not sold everyone for cheap. All I can find on Ali is V3 and LM. Latter one is quite expensive. i226-V are only available embedded with motherboards.

Nice to see a known name make a cheap one of these. Too bad between my HSF, video card, and sound card, everything is either taken or blocked off. I'll have to rearrange things even if I buy a new video card since it'll block another slot.

There are 10Gb NIC on eBay for around 30-40. Good to see TP Link offering cheaper 2,5Gb NIC. It is making home networking more flexible and affordable for those who want to upgrade from 1Gb. That being said, at this point 2,5 is an odd ball. Whose wanting to upgrade to an faster network (LAN mostly) can easily see that 10Gb offers best price/performance ratio. By that, I mean used server gear. And while being in the branch, there are Mikrotik routers and switches, Unify, Juniper,etc with solid chipsets, hardware parts and software.