On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 2:31 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via Talk < talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote: This is just in my home; mostly my home lab with too much equipment. Your
usage is surely different.
Not as different as you think ;-) I decided a couple of years ago that all new switches will be 2.5G and that
I will prefer computers with 2.5G (or better) NICs. 2.5G is very affordable. In fact 5G and 10G are creeping down in price. Do consider power consumption too.
My house is wired for Ethernet and I have two 2.5GB switches. One where the Bell drop and router are located, the other in my own home lab. The others haven't been upgraded past gigabit, including the LAN-connected mesh access points to provide the wifi.
8-port dumb or smart switches are cheap on a good day at AliExpress. Amazon isn't too bad either.
It all depends on how long you're willing to wait. If you can wait two weeks, Aliexpress will do fine and has done me fine for both my switches and my interfaces (cheap PCI cards <https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005241972464.html> for the desktops, USB dongles <https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006834329050.html>for laptops and PCs without empty slots). If you limit searches to the ALi "Choice" collection shipping is quite fast ... as little as 10 days ... if the order exceeds $10. Of course returns are handled very differently, but for cheap commodity stuff the better vendors on Ali will just re-ship without demanding the return. Many 8-port 2.5G dumb switches also have an 10G SFP+ port. Many? I couldn't find any that didn' t have them, truly irksome. That adds (for my use) needless cost. But I gave up and just got two of these <https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006821314123.html> that are under $50 each despite having one of those 10GB ports. Everything has worked fine. (As usual, with the right tricks, and patience, you can save money over the
normal AliExpress price. Figuring the tricks out is often labour-intensive.)
You have my attention. What kind of tricks? - Evan