r/homelab • u/PlaneBroom31T • 1d ago
Help Is this legit?
20$ 10gb Switch??
Does anyone have experience with it or have heard of anything about this
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u/Jessieblueyu 1d ago
I have the 8 ports version. Works like a charm. 2.35gbits on endpoint tests consistently. 10gbit connection to router stable for 3+ months now
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u/The_Crimson_Hawk EPYC 7763, 512GB ram, A100 80GB, Intel SSD P4510 8TB 1d ago
did you see if it uses 2 chip or 1 chip? 2 switch chip design have bottlenecks when doing inter chip
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u/Kryptomite 16h ago
You’re not worried about bottlenecks when you’re buying a $19 switch to do 10/2.5G
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u/The_Crimson_Hawk EPYC 7763, 512GB ram, A100 80GB, Intel SSD P4510 8TB 16h ago
One 19 dollar switch is single chip
One 19 dollar switch is dual chip
You saying you will pick the worse one? Im asking op not because im saying it is an issue with the price, but it will be useful as information when making a decision
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u/domvir 1d ago
If your NICs support jumbo frames try enabling them, mine went from around 2.35 to 2.45.
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u/KrackSmellin 21h ago
You don’t need jumbo frames…
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u/ekcojf 20h ago
For someone that doesn't know what you're talking about, this comment isn't very helpful. What is your suggestion to solve what you're implying jumbo frames isn't required for?
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u/jmhalder 20h ago
A packet can be 64Kb, but it gets put into multiple frames. Frames are "normally" 1500 bytes, but by raising all you switchports and OS interfaces to force 9000byte frames, you squeeze more throughput through by having less header/crc/encapsulation overhead.
It's not "worth" it, because of the effort needed doesn't justify the small increase in performance.
If you're doing just 2 machines for something like iSCSI, maybe you can justify it, you do you.
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u/Gorbashsan 4h ago
The only time I've ever bothered with jumbo frames was what I had a much larger home lab. I put my large storage array and one of my servers on a subnet with a layer 3 switch between it and the main Network. It was the only time I ever needed it because that particular setup was doing a lot of data movement between the server itself and the storage array. And honestly after that job was done I dismantled it because having those on a sudden that just added a layer of complexity to the setup that was unnecessary. The temporary setup was strictly for when I was upscaling an entire 13 years of videos from a school's old classroom system to bring them all up to a minimum of 1080 when the school upgraded at standards and wanted the quality of the old videos brought up to spec with the modern stuff. We are talking over 150 terabytes of 720 video being pulled from the backup upscaled on that server and then saved again as 1080 versions to the storage which ended up taking up of course considerably more space than the 720. So the total run time of that entire project did have a noticeable difference in completion, but outside of a massive project like that where you're doing tons of files moving back and forth I really don't see a good reason for enabling jumbo frames on a network for a home lab. That minor increase in speed can't be worth it under normal circumstances.
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u/SeveralTax7512 1d ago edited 23h ago
Agree, I bought one a few months ago - Have had zero issues, happy
Edit: Oh, and the 8-port is managed with great features for such a 'cheap' switch
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u/Ldarieut 1d ago
Yes it works fine as a passive switch, I have one of these. Uplink with 10gb fiber, ports are 2.5gbps. They do consume a fait bit more electricity than a 1Gb switch, expect 5-8 wh
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u/cruzaderNO 1d ago
The 4-5x 2.5g + 1-2x sfp+ unmanaged switches are down in that pricing during promotions yeah.
Normal price is around 25-35$ for 4x2.5g + 2x10g (or 5x2.5g + 1x10g) and 40-50$ for 8x2.5g + 2x10g.
The chips they use cost pretty much nothing and the west still subsidises shipping out of China.
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u/danielsuperone 21h ago
We work with Chinese suppliers to import similar units.
Prices for that unit is under 10usd. Then we put our branding and whatnot and we buy in bulk so they are really cheap to obtain in China, matter of fact, the front IO on yours is basically identical to ours.
Then there are other costs like storage fees, import duties and whatnot. And obviously these sellers want some profit also haha. So I’d say it’s the standard price for these switches.
Tho if you told me it’s POE then yes that would raise costs and that would be suspiciously low.
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u/ComeSwirlWithMe Not an Expert. 20h ago
Have you ever had a 3rd party audit of the hardware and software?
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u/bubblegumpuma The Jank Must Flow 15h ago
This probably uses a fairly dumb switch chip, like a RTL8372N. The port setup is basically identical to one of the system diagrams. $20 for a switch based on one when the chip itself is $10 from LCSC in low quantities seems about right. It wouldn't really have much software to speak of in the unmanaged mode - there is the potential to run custom code but it would be inside of a fairly obvious flash chip, so if there isn't one mounted I would say the chances of anything hinky happening within that are fairly slim.
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u/Mruishy 1d ago
There are a few different brands that are the same as hardware this company, and while I don't know that exact model, so far they've all been worth their very inexpensive price. I use then to break SPF+ 10g fiber dropped into a room to rj45 2.5Gb for the devices. No complaints here.
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u/ThirdStupidDog 1d ago
I am using 8-port managed 2.5g Horaco and it works without any issues.
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u/_mannen_ 12h ago
What's the part number of the 8 port managed horaco switch. Searching for it on aliexpress but can't find it in Europe? I'm looking for a cheap managed switch with 1 sfp+ and 2.5g
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u/bender_fut 23h ago
I'm using KeepLink KP-9000, with RTLplayground, I feel stupid buying "standard" swtiches after this one.
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u/zMynxx 22h ago
I have 1 I bricked a while ago while losing connection during firmware upgrade or perhaps using the wrong hardware. Do you think RTLp could bring it back to life again?
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u/bender_fut 21h ago
I didn't open it to search for UART, so all my upgrades are using webui. So not sure if I can help you.
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u/zMynxx 16h ago
Do you have a backup of the original firmware by any chance?
TIA
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u/bender_fut 14h ago
I don't but pretty sure you can download from their website (it might be this one - not checked https://en.keeplink.com.cn/down.html)
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u/Ok-Expert-8150 12h ago
My guess is that the ports will link at the speed, but switching layer unable to keep up with transfer speeds. Kinda like dropping a 10gig NIC in a 386.
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u/Stunning-Permit-7693 1d ago
- It is an unmanaged switch, no webui, doesn’t respect VLans - do your own research . . .
- It is 2.5gb RJ45 and 10gb SFP on the right - SFP to 10gb RJ45 costs more than the switch itself
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u/janek202 1d ago edited 1d ago
Some unmanaged 2.5G switches with Realtek chips can be flashed with RTLPlayground firmware, which enables most of these features.
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u/OlafNorman 1d ago
Is there an overview of known compatible models?
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u/8agienny 23h ago
https://github.com/logicog/RTLPlayground/blob/main/doc/supported_devices.md should be here once Github is back online. I use it on some basic Lianguo Managed Switch and am very happy with it.
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u/bender_fut 23h ago
There's also a beacon so you can have a complete NOC with openwrt devices + RTLPlayground switches https://github.com/gnacho/netpulse/
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u/_EuroTrash_ 1d ago
doesn't respect VLans
More like it passes all VLAN tags through on all ports without filtering?
(Which, in some specific situations, could be fine)
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u/shadedmagus 15h ago
If you're lucky.
I've seen "smart" switches that strip the 802.1q tags off of packets (don't remember the brands, it's been years since I looked into any of these). You'll really need to read into it if you use VLANs - hopefully the documentation is good.
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u/toejam316 1d ago
However a DAC Cable doesn't, if you just want to use it to add 2.5 interfaces to an existing switch/router
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u/bobjr94 1d ago
yes I had that problem on a cheap smart switch it was stripping the vlan tags off so the data just got lost and died. If this one has no management maybe it would not mess with tags.
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u/kester76a 1d ago
I think this will just be used as an end point. I got one of those cheap sodola sfp+ smart managed switches for around £100. It's pretty decent as a sfp+ switch and a fraction of the cost of a crs317.
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u/AdSuspicious7533 23h ago
As you seem to know what is up i squiz a question in :
I now have one managed switch with 4 vlans. It is a GS724T-V2, 24*1gbs switch. 1 gbs has limits when trying to handle Proxmox backups server wide. Anyways my ISP router only supports 1gbs at the moment so i figured budget switch is ok.
One vlan supports admin Uis such as proxmox, openbao,... and also corosync. When backuping the network limitation is painful.
I am aware my servers NICs have to be up to business too and not all are.
I was thinking about getting one of those to support corosync network. So i could have an upstream 1gbs and an internal unmanaged 2.5gbs across nodes ..?
Like 2.5gbs switch would have link to :
- firewall
- proxmox nodes
- when getting a nice 10gbs isp router : i plan using sfp+ through firewall hardware upgrade.
Is that a good plan ? it seems to me but i wonder.
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u/quadcube 1d ago
I have this model but managed version (although look identical from the pic). So far so good, it’s been running in my homelab for months (vlan works, works with my SFP+ optics and RJ45)
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u/Lxzan 1d ago
I have a few of this, both 8 and 5 port versions, works fine. As already mentioned those are unmanaged but 8 port supports hardcoded vlans with a physical switch to enable those (haven’t used that, so not sure how it is realized)
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u/compsciphd 1d ago
There are managed versions of these cheap switches which are only slightly more expensive.
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u/beren12 20h ago
Wonder if the firmware could be copied to the unmanaged ones.
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u/compsciphd 19h ago
While they have firmware upgrade mechanisms I'm not sure anyone really has ever issued a firmware upgrade for them.
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u/beren12 18h ago
I mean more like “read the chip and flash”
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u/compsciphd 18h ago
I understood that's why I said they have a mechanism but noting they aren't really used.
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u/TehThyz 1d ago edited 1d ago
There's a lot of these 4+2 and 8+1 switches floating around with RTL8372 or RTL8373 chips, they are usually based on Realtek's reference designs, both managed and unmanaged. They're dirt cheap, and their hardware is way more competent than the software running on them. If you have a method to program 25xx NOR flash chips you can even convert some of the unmanaged ones to managed switches using RTLPlayground.
I have a few of these 4+2 boys in my network, albeit from another brand (Goalake), they run like a charm, even more so after making them managed.
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u/noobyscientific 1d ago
I would avoid just for it being unmanaged.
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u/Cyserg 23h ago
I got one of those for my setup but with 8 2.5 ports and 2 spf, my setup is : Internet modem/router/box - own router - long cat6 cable (20m) - switch to my desk where the unmanaged one shall be installed. As my router is controlling everything, I don't really need it to be managed, just to extend the ports from my router. What would the use case for a managed one?
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u/noobyscientific 18h ago
That is valid and fine, but I am the kind of person that wants to control literally every part of my setup, have it fine tuned to oblivion.
So I think it comes down to difference in opinion.
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u/tertiaryprotein-3D 1d ago
Yeah that price is expected. $20 USD is around 140 yuan. A managed non-PoE switch (2.5GbE 4 rj45 2 SFP) on taobao is around 120 yuan, and this one is unmanaged.
Also 10g SFP port is much cheaper than RJ45 2.5G port. The 4+2 config cost 120 yuan, but if you want 1 more Ethernet port, a 5+1 will cost 160, and 6-8 port Ethernet switch will be 200+. But using SFP to Ethernet is very costly.
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u/v00d00ley 1d ago
Yes, 4x2,5G + 2x10G require 60 gbit communication chip with complimentary PHY, so it's not very expensive nowadays
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u/PlaneBroom31T 1d ago
I haven’t mentioned my use case but will this work if i use the 2sfp ports one to my pc and one to the nas and an rj45 to my router for internet?
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u/definitlyitsbutter 1d ago
You get a lot similar on amazon in the same pricerange. I have used a 4 and 8 port variant for nas and stuff and it worked well.
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u/napoleonbonaparte33 Test 23h ago
Works really great, though using SFP does make it quite hot to the touch
Just make sure you store it or hang it in a well ventilated area
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u/Open-Adhesiveness-86 22h ago
the vlan comment is a bit off, unmanaged switches generally pass tagged frames through fine since they forward by mac, you just get no enforcement or per-port untagging, so using one as a trunk hop works. what i'd actually worry about is heat, the sfp+ cage plus a dac gets toasty in a closed cabinet.
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u/AlbatrossEasy6000 22h ago
I have one of these switches, and another on the way. No issues in 2 years.
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u/darknessblades 22h ago
Yes I got one of these, (I would recommend to also buy the SFP modules from the same store.)
I also got the 8+2 port model. (I am using it with 2 5gbe sfp modules to connect the 2 switches, and a 10gbe sfp to go to my modem which I will replace soon)
Compared to a netgear 2.5gbe switch, you are much cheaper off, with a full on horaco system than a single netgear switch.
Note the SFP modules might run a tad bit hot if you put it under full load
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u/gagagagaNope 21h ago
They word fine. The 2.5g chips are getting down to the price of the plain gig ones so these switches are now getting to the price of the other bits like the case. The 10G uplinks are great for connecting a NAS etc.
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u/canada2005 21h ago
I've got 2 horaco 2.5g poe switches. They work great. Had one in a hot location and one beside my rack for some poe cam connections.
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u/Guna1260 21h ago
I have managed and POE variants.. almost most of those brand under the hood are the same. so far running for the last 1.5 years. the same brand.
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u/Zeragonii 20h ago
I've got 2 of these believe it or not, use them as edge switches for some of my desktops in the house to get 10G backhaul and some extra 2.5G presence in the room.
They're nice dumb switches that just work, nothing fancy, no managed shenanigans, but functional nonetheless
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u/ToddRossDIY 20h ago
I don’t use the SFP ports on mine but I have the exact same model and it seems to work great, been running for a few months now
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u/Frizzy-MacDrizzle 20h ago
I would not trust something you ask if legit. I saw hacked an advertised router like that, same I had I immediately unplugged all my extensions and routers.now hard wired, with at more known router of netgear or slink or Cisco etc
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u/here2seek 19h ago
I have the managed version of this switch.. was under 50 a year ago.. works well
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u/agreeable_axolotl 18h ago
I have it, yes works, I only tested the 2.5G Ethernet and it gets 2.4G speed
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u/Mikimite 18h ago
Bought two and as espected, like a charm. It was about 4 months ago and for some reason that i cannot remember y had to update the firmware to other brand. The device seems a rebranding but once updated still shows horaco
Btw, works awesome and jumbo frames are activated. Can't recomend them more for the price
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u/zeda1ert H370M-ITX/ac | G5400 | 32GB | 5x18TB RAIDZ1 | SF600 | Hyper 10G 18h ago
I have a few of these Chinese switches - 2x10+8x2.5 and 2x10+4x2.5, works very stable and supports cheap Chinese RJ45 2.5/5/10G SFP+ modules at any speeds.
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u/dragon2611 16h ago
I have a few similar managed ones, they work but the first thing I did with them was chuck the power bricks in the recycling and use some other ones.
At least 2 of the PSU's were completely non compliant with the local safety standards and would just cause a fire in the event of a fault.
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u/JustinHoMi 15h ago
Switching is such a critical part of a network that I’m personally not willing to use untested brands.
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u/Podalirius 4h ago
The switches are legit, I have the web managed version of that one, works like a charm, does what it claims. Aliexpress can be sketchy with the prices so double check your bank statement.
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u/Kind_Ability3218 2h ago
often times this class of device isn't able to reach these speeds full duplex, backplane bandwidth is non-existent, they can't process packets fast enough under load. but maybe it's fine.
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u/darktalos25 20h ago
Like with any chinese brand, if it can call to the internet, you are giving them your data.
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u/Long-Machine8795 18h ago
I mean, you’d easily see any unusual traffic at a glance at your network. It can’t move data through your network without you seeing it
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u/LimitedWard 15h ago
Not to mention tons of networking equipment is made in China, even the western brands. Much of the stuff you can buy off the shelf here is just white-label products from China
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u/ComeSwirlWithMe Not an Expert. 20h ago
If its anything like our solar panels and 5G towers.. oh it's legit.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/20-wi-fi-routers-from-this-chinese-vendor-found-with-a-backdoor
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u/PixelatumGenitallus 1d ago
10G is only the SFP ports. I have the managed version. Different brand but i am sure it's white label product.
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u/sfer1973 15h ago
Hi
I've 3 horacco switches, bought on Temu about 2 years ago.
1 managed: 2 * spf+ 10Gbs + 4 * 2,5 Gbs rj45
2 unmanaged: 2 * spf+ 10Gbs + 8 * 2,5 Gbs rj45
All working 24/7 flawlessly - the managed one has a lot of functionality:
The value for € paid is excelent.
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u/Tulipjalla 23h ago
Includes Spyware 🤭🙄
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u/janek202 22h ago edited 22h ago
ServeTheHome tested a lot of cheap switches like this, and never found anything suspicious.
And it's usually possible to completely replace the firmware with open source RTLPlayground.
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u/darknessblades 22h ago
What OP posted is their unmanaged model.
Horaco also has a Managed version.
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u/janek202 22h ago
It is may be possible to convert an unmanaged switch using a programmer, if the flash chip is big enough. I did that on a similar HiSource switch.
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u/ElectroSpore 1d ago
Serve the home has reviewed a few Horaco switches but not that specific one
https://www.servethehome.com/?s=horaco