In upgrading from copper to fiber, I’ve been exploring the different options and learning as I go. Some learning curves have been steep, others have been “relearning” what I already knew.
One of the biggest things I needed to learn is that there are “switches” that are actually “routers”. That was mind-bending.
The other is that the network dudes talk about VLAN and Tagged VLAN. They are different things. In the environments I’ve been working in, there are only tagged VLANs which are called “VLAN”. Same name, different meaning.
The starting place when moving from copper to fiber is to understand what a Small Form-Factor Pluggable is. This is the magic that makes it all happen. This is standardized into SFP and SFP+. The SFP standard only supports 1G and lower speeds.
The SFP+ supports higher speed modules. 10G, 25G, 40G and 100G are all standards I’ve seen.
I’m only working with 10G modules, at this time.
They have modules that are RJ45 copper that will run at slower speeds or up to 10G. The only issue is that they draw more power and run hot. Can’t touch them when running hot.
The fix for this is to purchase a switch or router that has RJ45 Ethernet ports and at least one SFP+ port.
I found a small, six port, switch. This comes with 4 RJ45 ports, rated at 2.5G each, and 2 SFP+ ports rated at 10G each. Cool.
This allows me to daisy-chain them if I wanted.
In reality, it meant that I had one host connected at 10G while the others were at 2.5G.
I also found a L2/L3 “switch” that looks much like the switch above.
Having done the upgrades, I started looking into upgrading the router between the outside world and the DMZ. The routers I’ve been getting to not support any crypto, so they don’t have good VPN capability, something I want.
So I went looking. Looking for a “motherboard with SFP”. Something interesting popped. A mini ITX motherboard with 4 SFP+ ports and 4 RJ45 ports along with HDMI, VGA and the standard USB ports. It also provided space for two M.2 SSD modules, 2 DDR4 slots and two 6GByte SATA ports.
It might not be the fastest computer on the block, but it looks like a good starting point.
This leads me to other motherboards of the same ilk. And what I found was a bunch of these motherboards. And the port layouts all look the same. The specifications all look the same.
What we have is a “standard” motherboard which is put in a “standard” case along with a wall wart, HDMI cable and a mounting bracket. The branding stays the same.
I have an L2 switch that I’m going to take apart in a bit. It has a limit of 1550 byte packets, making it useless for my new network. I wonder if I will find an M.2 module in that box or something else that allows me to change the software.
Meanwhile, that motherboard is on my wish list. I’ll load pfSense on it along with FRR and replace my current router. Giving me a considerable boost in capabilities and letting me dispense with the VyOS configuration language. Which I really don’t like.
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