I’m looking into switching from 1gig Ethernet in the network to at least 2.5gig for my core switch. I’d love to be able to do intervlan routing with a layer 3 switch but am unsure whether it’s worth my time and effort.
Should I instead just setup my OPNsense with LAGG of 3-4x 1gig ports and just continue routing VLAN traffic with it?
I know it’s not optimal, but I’m also looking to do things relatively within budget. I don’t want to spend $500+ on a 2.5/10gig layer 3 switch… especially but if that’s my options I’ll consider it.
Edit: I made my decision. I found the Brocade ICX6610-48P. It ticks almost all the boxes that I’m looking for.
- more than 4x 10gbps SFP+
- layer 3
- has plenty of expansion for both SFP+ ports and for Ethernet ports.
I know that it doesn’t have 2.5/5g speeds natively, but I’m understanding that if I set the SFP ports to 10G but have transceivers that are capable of negotiating 2.5 or 5g speeds. Then it still works. Currently, I’ll continue using 1G speeds on my mini pcs, but my NAS and my proxmox node that hosts OPNsense will be 10G, even though I won’t necessarily need it since I’ll be switching to Layer 3 routing on the switch and not OPNsense. Eventually, I’ll play around with some 2.5/5g USB dongles for the mini pcs since they aren’t compatible with any additional modules for Ethernet.
I think it will eventually completely replace my SG2428P since it doubles the amount of ports and has POE.
Now it’s just the uphill battle to learn a new system and integrate it with my network and cause multiple outages at the same time 😂
Yeah I think that this would help immensely by going with a smaller 10gb switch for the "core" network and then having all the lower bandwidth needs on larger switches. I think that'll end up with a better experience overall.