On 28/05/2014 10:16 PM, Russell Coker wrote:
Has anyone had any experience with 10GigE?
I'm not after anything at all complex, just a single server that needs something a little faster than GigE talking to a single switch that can spread the bandwidth over 12+ GigE ports. The Intel 10GigE cards are well supported under Linux. There is the X520 series with Direct Attach SFP+/Twinax and the X540 supports 10GBASE-T over Cat6 (55m) / Cat6a (100m). Both come in single and dual port versions.
The signal processing and coding for 10GBASE-T is very intense; hence the X540 has a heatsink rivaling that of a low end video card. DA-SFP+ is the preferred cabling method for 10GigE, it isn't as power intensive, and is a bit cheaper too. The downside is above a couple of metres you need active cables which get a bit more expensive
As an aside, I think it would be nice if someone developed an Ethernet card and switch as one combined device. It would be a PCIe card that looks to the system like a regular Ethernet port connected to a 4 port switch with the only software visible difference being that it had 4* the bandwidth of a regular Ethernet port.
Have you looked at 802.3ad / Link Aggregation? This might achieve the outcome you want - more throughput when you have many clients taking to the same server, without the expense of 10GigE NICs and switches.