Upgrade your connection with our new home internet offering gigabit speeds!
Upgrade your connection with our new home internet offering gigabit speeds!
Good morning and welcome! I’m excited about your new home project and have some questions to clarify. We’ll be connecting our house to a gigbit internet service from CableOne. My goal is to set up my PC with 10gig connections to the home server, but I want to make sure I’m doing it right without overspending. I’ve heard about pfSense as a router option and am curious about its features. As someone who enjoys customizing systems, I’m open to exploring more advanced setups. Also, we’ll need a home streaming cache and a 4K media library, which makes the 10gig bandwidth even more valuable. If you have any tips or recommendations for building a budget-friendly router on this setup, please share them so we can fine-tune our plan.
Unless you were organizing large data transfers, you likely wouldn't require 10 gig ethernet. Not at all for streaming 4k unless you intended many concurrent streams. Even high bitrate content could handle around 8-10 streams on a gigabit connection, though I haven't confirmed that with only three 4k-capable devices. There are some YouTube videos suggesting ways to achieve 10 gig ethernet and a cheaper router, but it's still an expensive option. If you find one, I'd share it, though it's not just a simple plug-and-play setup. Considering the frequent streaming in a home network probably isn't worthwhile unless your work depends on it.
A 10Gbps "router" isn't practical yet. Even pfSense struggles with it on top-of-the-line gear, and the power usage feels excessive when you only need Gigabit speeds for a while. If you're connecting PCs, building a 1Gb router and using a 10Gb switch makes sense, though it might not be worth the investment. I currently have 10Gbps on my NAS with 1Gb elsewhere, which helps avoid bottlenecks when multiple clients access files. You should consider whether you'll frequently need more than 1Gb between devices versus the network cost, as that could be quite expensive.
Sure, guys. I believe this will guide me correctly. I’ll return after I’m home and ask a few more questions.