Ensure proper connectivity between your home server and gaming PC using a 10GbE switch.
Ensure proper connectivity between your home server and gaming PC using a 10GbE switch.
Hello! Your setup is interesting. Yes, you can connect the two PCs directly with Ethernet cables without needing a switch—just use a Cat7 cable for reliable performance. A 10Gbe switch offers more features and better management of multiple devices, but from a consumer standpoint it mainly adds complexity unless you need advanced routing or QoS settings.
Yes, but only when no other devices require access to the server or htpc because traffic can't be routed through that peer-to-peer link. Give your PC and HTPC the same IP address in the same range (for example 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 with identical subnet masks like 255.255.255.0) and set up the shares accordingly. 2. Not possible with your existing configuration, only viable if you plan to add more PCs or servers later.
Traffic can indeed reach both computers through a peer-to-peer link. You’d need two network cards on the server side and a running server operating system. Once installed, you’d link one card to your internet and the other to your PC. Essentially, all data would travel via the server to the second machine, making your PC act as a router. It raises the question—why choose 10GbE when a 1Gb connection suffices? Switching from a home network to 10GbE can be costly (based on real experience). Unless you’re working on a project like this, it’s usually not worthwhile. In most scenarios, if higher bandwidth is required between the two devices, a dual-homed configuration would be more efficient. If you’re planning to move and transfer large files frequently, your average 7200rpm drive handles about 150MBps. A 1Gb connection supports roughly 128MBps. For typical needs, the added speed isn’t necessary; instead, consider setting up a dual-NIC setup to double your throughput to around 256MBps.
Simplifying your network would also help by using a single 10Gb switch from the beginning. Based on what you mentioned, you’d likely need two NICs per PC—each with 1 Gb connected to your router for a clear path. One PC would have a 1 Gb link and the other a full 10 Gb, both set up manually. Do you often transfer large 4K videos or big files between these systems to use that high-speed connection?
He might not require the extra speed even when moving 4K files between devices, unless he’s using a raid configuration or relying on SSDs for his data storage.
He seems to be opting for SATA 3 SSDs at a minimum. I skipped upgrading my network to 10Gb a few months back, and while the components were around $2000, swapping the drives in the systems would have cost roughly double that. It didn’t seem worthwhile right now unless there was a particular need.
when i did mine I just purchased used 10gbe commercial equipment. Which cut down on cost a good deal, but was still pretty hefty in cost. My usage was actually more of a test scenario that turned in to a project. So in my house I have my "lab" which is full of server, game servers, and gaming pc's. I have about 6 solid gaming pc's as of this writing with the oldest running a 2600k at 4.5ghz with a 780 in it. That being said most of the kids that frequent my house all play the same handful of games. So I had ssd's in each machine that were all using 200-300gb of space for the same EXACT games. So my thought was, hey why don't I move these games to a central server with enough IO and bandwidth to feed the 5 machines (mine will never use it). So I Dropped in 3 500gb SSD's and set them up in raid 0. I installed 2 10gbe cards in the server and 1 each for the gaming machines. Then ran it all to a 10gbe switch. I multi-homed the server so it had 20gbe of bandwidth if needed and then the 10gbe each for the machines. I put the games on the server machine and then mapped the drive on all my gaming machines so it just launched from there. My results were not bad. I was able to read/write about 950-1050 MBps with my raid 0 setup. My 10gbe connection could move 1250MBps if needed. So while launching a game on the pc from a local SSD took anywhere from 6-10 seconds in most cases, the server setup could lost them in 10-15 maybe, where as a 7200rpm drive would take 30+. So I gained a lot of extra space by going this route and my performance on the actual machines was barely affected. Anyways the above was my reason for going 10gbe and I know for a fact it is not a common scenario and that 10gbe is overkill for pretty much everyone except for maybe %.001 of people.
It's actually much easier than it seems. By connecting both the LAN NIC and the 10Gig NIC, traffic flows between them as your PC switches between them. This works only while the PC is running. A better option would be installing a Gigabit switch with two 10Gig ports for the devices needing higher speeds. However, the previous method is straightforward and more affordable. In the end, I believe 10Gig NICs are still too costly to justify this approach.