Where are all the 2.5gb managed Poe switches at?

[SunnyD]

I’ve been slowly spending money on my homelab lately and decided that since my server supports 10gb, Nas and pc support 2.5gb I may as well support the economy and buy a new switch.

Only problem is I’m having the damnedest time finding a 16+ port managed POE multi gigabit switch. 5 or 8 ports, sure. 16+ ports with poe unmanaged, yep. 16+ ports managed without Poe, can do. But put it all together, nope.

I do have the use case for it. I have devices that will benefit from LAGG. I have devices that need Poe. I have multi gig devices. But other than the pricey enterprise stuff, I see not much on the market. Why is this?

 

[steelghost]

I think the issue is that outside of "the enterprise", the demand for what you're after is not very high. PoE switches are typically used for either APs or cameras. Cameras don't even need gigabit, and the main use case for multi-gig ports and APs is workplaces where clients are expected to be wireless but still need significant bandwidth, or public areas where the client density is high enough to need that kind of backhaul.

I suspect you're best off going for the "plenty of ports, multigig, managed" option and getting (or continuing to use) a separate device to handle PoE.

 

[FranzJoseph]

Because 1Gb/s managed with PoE is good enough for most such uses, and the rest might just as well get a 10Gb/s $4,000 Netgear?

You might want to look at QNAP QSW-M2116P-2T2S (or its US equivalent), seems it might fit the bill for you. Roughly $1,000 though. 16x2.5, 4x10, managed, SFP+, PoE 280W (30W per port), 160Gb/s total. Just citing the description of my retailer after setting a few listing filters per your reqs.

 

[BigDukeSix]

I have an all Unifi stack and I've been looking at their offerings but for a 2.5gb or better POE switch you'll need to move their 24 port offerings. I'm tempted to just move some of my devices to Unifi's Flex 2.5 POE switch as a start since not everything on my network is 2.5gb.

 

[GaitherBill]

Yeah, Unifi has a good range of them. I have an 8 and a 5 port.

 

[wxfisch]

As others have noted, just because your PC, NAS, Server, etc. support 2.5/10Gbps doesn't mean your use cases will benefit from them, and those devices won't leverage PoE anyways. Things like phones and cameras usually don't need more than 100Mbps so a 2.5G PoE switch isn't a huge benefit. An AP might benefit, but then if you only have one or two APs in your home, a smaller 2.5G PoE switch would fit your need, just aggragate it to your main, non-PoE switch and call it a day.

Unless you are regularly doing large file transfers from your PC to your NAS/Server, that is unlikely to saturate a 2.5G link, the server-NAS link may, depending on how you have things set up. FWIW, I use LACP for my NAS and ProxMox hosts on 1G links and have no issues even storing all the disks on an NFS share for ProxMox to use (so activity can be pretty high sometimes).

The homelab rush to install 2.5G everywhere has always seemed like a keeping up with the jones' effort to me (in the same way that the vast majority of people don't need 1Gbps internet speeds, 300-500Gbps easily handles like 80% of households internet needs). We all have a tendency to look at bigger numbers and think that means it must be better and we need it (and that our hosts support it, so it is "wasted" if we don't fully utilize it), but in a lot of cases that is just wasted cost.

Before you go and drop $1k+ on a new switch, it may be worth planning out how often you expect each of your 16 ports to actually run at higher than 1Gbps, and which ones actually need PoE. Maybe you do have a use case for all 16 to need both, but you would be an outlier in my experience, even in the homelab space (which is why you usually only find 8 port prosumer models, or 24+ port enterprise models).

 

[GaitherBill]

Sometimes* it’s just about that nerd cred of having wicked fast stuff just for the sake of it.






*always

 

[SunnyD]

I have an all Unifi stack and I've been looking at their offerings but for a 2.5gb or better POE switch you'll need to move their 24 port offerings. I'm tempted to just move some of my devices to Unifi's Flex 2.5 POE switch as a start since not everything on my network is 2.5gb.

The Pro Max 16 PoE is the closest thing I can get to what I want, but even then it's only 4x 2.5gb ports total (plus 2x SFP+ which are already spoken for) with the rest being gigabit ports. In general that should be okay for my immediate needs, but I anticipate that I will be wanting more than 4x 2.5gb ports in the near future with at least 3x of them already spoken for. That and I'm not keen on the whole unifi ecosystem having used it extensively in the past - I still have my Switch 8-150.

Unless you are regularly doing large file transfers from your PC to your NAS/Server

I do. Regularly. Often.

For better context - I absolutely loathe the idea of having to plug multiple things into a power outlet when there is no real reason to, and manage multiple different devices where there shouldn't be a need to. I'm absolutely not going to spend enterprise money on this, so if it's ultimately not possible so be it. But I'm trying to understand why there are so few options at this point of the game.

 

[steelghost]

I have built out my home network kinda piecemeal over the last couple of years, so I'm not exactly saying this would be how I'd do it starting from scratch. But it probably wouldn't be very different. Basically a 10GBit backbone where the clients / servers can actually benefit, and 1G links (which is 100M or even 10M in quite a few cases) for pretty much everything else. There's a handful of VLANs terminated on the RB5009 as well, so the 10G link between the router and 10G switch isn't just for sh!ts and giggles.

Downside is I'm running four switches and router for all this.
(Yes, it's a Notepad screenshot, I couldn't get the forum to display it properly)

My general point is that even if you have some devices (and expect to have more) that can use faster connections, many of your devices probably don't even need gigabit.

If there was a 2.5G version of this you'd be all set, but sadly they are kinda slow in their 2.5G rollout. There is this, which gives you x8 2.5G and x2 SFP+. Use one of those for your server and the other as an uplink to one of these? That's sub $450, at least based on their online pricelist. I'm sure other brands have similar products but I'm most familiar with Mikrotik. Yes, it's two different units but as said, I just don't think what you're looking for exists outside of products aimed at commercial deployments.

 

[w00key]

There is this, which gives you x8 2.5G and x2 SFP+. Use one of those for your server and the other as an uplink to one of these?

Literally my setup. The downstairs switch goes into the OLT and various APs, 10G to router in home office that actually talks to the OLT over PPPoE and provides internet.

The old mental model of Internet needs to be near the router is too old fashioned. You can place it anywhere and we have tons of routers with just 1 port in use. To the switch, route VLANs. WAN is just yet another VLAN.

 

[steelghost]

My backup WAN connection (the SXT-R LTE modem / router) provides internet over a VLAN, I didn't want to remove the port its attached to from the main bridge, because then I wouldn't have been able to make the management interface of the SXT available over my main management VLAN #firstworldproblems

The PoE RB5009 is great though, it meant I no longer needed a PoE switch in my rack. OP probably doesn't want to change their router though!

 

[Kyuu]

My somewhat similar search eventually led me to just use two separate switches due to this very problem you're running into: a 16-port Ubiquiti Edgeswitch that's all gigabit PoE, and an 8-port Trendnet that does 2.5g and PoE.

 

[Paladin]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/389569422215

Cisco WS-C3850-12X48U, it has 48 ports with UPOE (and an 1100 watt power supply, you can get a second one if you want) and 12 of the ports will do 2.5/5/10 gbit. The rest are 1 gbit and the SFP+ module can be swapped out for a 10 gigabit SFP+ version if you want.

That one is a bit banged up but I would guess it will work fine.

 

[teubbist]

TP-Link TL-SG3428XPP-M2 seems to fit and isn't horrendously expensive.

There's also the Horaco ZX-AXGM-SWTG3624AS and Hasivo 24GTP-6SX-L3 if you want to dice roll. I've found that most of the CN switches based on RTL designs(usually indicated by having a console port) to be reasonable, but that's mostly been the 8-12 port models.

 

[BigLan]

The Pro Max 16 PoE is the closest thing I can get to what I want, but even then it's only 4x 2.5gb ports total (plus 2x SFP+ which are already spoken for) with the rest being gigabit ports. In general that should be okay for my immediate needs, but I anticipate that I will be wanting more than 4x 2.5gb ports in the near future with at least 3x of them already spoken for. That and I'm not keen on the whole unifi ecosystem having used it extensively in the past - I still have my Switch 8-150.

There the Pro Max 24 PoE, though unless you really need the poe++ gigabit ports its probably better just getting 2 of the Pro Max 16 PoE. The 24 gets you 8x2.5 ports, 8poe++ gig and 8poe+ gig (plus sfp+) while stacked 16's would get 8x2.5 and 24 PoE+ gig (and 2sfp+ assuming you used a DAC between them.)

There's also a pro max 48, though it's $1,300 so might be in spendy enterprise territory.

As others have said, most poe stuff like cameras only need gig ports and so there's not a real market for consumer level stuff with >8 2.5g ports (and I don't think there's a cheap Realtek solution either.)

 

[Arbelac]

TP-Link TL-SG3428XPP-M2 seems to fit and isn't horrendously expensive.

There's also the Horaco ZX-AXGM-SWTG3624AS and Hasivo 24GTP-6SX-L3 if you want to dice roll. I've found that most of the CN switches based on RTL designs(usually indicated by having a console port) to be reasonable, but that's mostly been the 8-12 port models.

I have the TPLink. It's solid. But the fans are loud. Make sure it's in a sound insulated room if you go with that.

 

[KD5MDK]

I think many people need PoE, need 2.5GbE (why does No One talk about 5GbE?) and need 24 ports but very few need all of them.
But what makes the situation messy is that 2.5GbE and PoE coexist as a common use case.

What we want is like 4 ports 2.5Gb PoE, 4 ports 2.5Gb, 8 ports 1Gb PoE, 8 ports 1Gb.
Plus 4xSFP+ for uplinks.

 

[xoa]

Thirding TP-Link. I've switched almost entirely from UniFi to Omada for switching/WAPs. If you're willing to pay enough (~$1800 last I checked) they do offer a 32 port do-it-all edge switch, 24 10Gbps PoE++ (around 700W total power budget?) ports and 8 SFP+. $720 will get you a switch with 24 2.5 Gbps ports split between PoE+ and ++, and 4 SFP+. I've deployed a few of those, along with smaller 10G+PoE++ switches. You might find that it's more efficient to just get 2-3 different switches that cater to what you need specifically vs one AIO, but up to you on the math for that. But it's definitely doable.

They don't have anything high performance, maxing out at 25 Gbps, but the only place I personally utilize 100G is iSCSI and I just got a dedicated Mikrotik for that and give it its own fabric, I don't need management or even want any connection to the rest of the network there. But if you need to be able to scale up farther in general just be aware it can't be part of the Omada stack right now. They also don't cover the full breadth of niche stuff UniFi does yet, though they're filling out pretty rapidly. And I don't run their routers so can't comment on that aspect.

Still, I enjoy using their clone controller of UniFi more then UniFi itself, their WAPs have performed much better in all my testing, they've implemented useful utility features like PPSKs faster and better then Ubiquiti ever did, and in general it's been a surprisingly good experience. Worth a gander perhaps.