Comments on: Networking on the Cheap Gigaplus 10Gbase-T Adapter Mini-Review Marvell AQC113

By: spuwho

spuwho — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 20:12:01 +0000

BSD support for Marvell/Aquantia is foobar at the moment. So don’t look to use them with your FreeNAS/xSense Firewall equipment. Aquantia chipsets have been out for years and their omission in some OS’es is pretty lame.

Realtek just came out with a 5Gbe chipset for the $21 adapter crowd (reviewed elsewhere on STH), so its just a matter of time before they come out with a RTL with 10GbE support.

By: Aluminum

Aluminum — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 17:45:53 +0000

How are both of these cards AQC113?

The gigaplus picture without the heatsink looks VERY strange, the chip is an irregular blurry black shape inside the clear white rectangle and literally 4+ times larger.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 20:43:27 +0000

@Onsigma Blue:
It’s not a “minor issue”. Media converters are an added cost to the already more expensive NIC/switch, and the media itself is also way more expensive than running RJ45. I can make a RJ45 cable that will run 1/2.5/5/10G by hand with simple tools.
Your choices for QSFP-compatible media are expensive copper direct attach cables that top out at 10m or fiber. Fiber is fragile (bending, crushing), easy to damage (a speck of dust in the connector can break it), hard to maintain (cleaning requires special tools), and most importantly impossible to create runs by yourself.
You either have to buy exact length fiber runs, pay someone to create the runs with specialized tools or buy the tools and training to do it yourself. Accidental damage to the end connector? That’s going to be a very expensive repair in contrast to just crimping a new RJ45.
When you think about it, the total cost of running with your idea vastly exceeds the gains for over 95% of use cases. I know it first hand since I have fiber runs in my property, but end devices are mostly still running on RJ45.

By: Enriquo Polazo

Enriquo Polazo — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 14:12:36 +0000

I think that its important to remember that this is “SERVE THE HOME” and not necessarily always enterprise-focused with enterprise budgets. What is a good choice for the datacenter isn’t always a good choice in the home.

What is the use case for 100Gb in the home? I think even 10Gb is laughable for most use cases, but as its price drops its hard to ignore. Future proofing for 25/100Gb isn’t really worth the extra cost now, when these prices will crash as new hotness is released and these become too old for the datacenter.

By: slope

slope — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 09:05:00 +0000

In testing, the adapter achieved 10Gbps speeds as expected, providing stable and reliable network performance.

By: Onsigma Blue

Onsigma Blue — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 20:51:11 +0000

@Kyle:
Yes, you need QSFP, but that is minor issue.

@Jesper:
Bullshit.
With network, people aither use ti for 99% for web browsing or for RPC, file transfer etc.
In the first case, you are good with existing 1G.
In the second, you need to invest in upgrade. So, if one is going to go that route, why not pay some more in WAY more capable equipment (and future proof!) that is meant for that use ?