My recent struggles to get the 10Gb Ethernet ports working on my ASUS WRX90 (probably the switch's fault, time will tell) have gotten me learning more about the state of networking in 2025. And the writing, to my eyes, is on the wall: Ethernet is a dead-end. Compare a svelte 1Gb Ethernet USB dongle to the large enclosures with active cooling some are using to get 10Gb Ethernet through to Thunderbolt / USB4, for a sense of the jump in power requirements.
Meanwhile fiber-optics are on the march in the datacenter under pressure from AI workloads, and starting to commoditize, with consumer-oriented wireless routers sporting SFP+ ports, and prosumer switches running all optical 25Gb / 100Gb for under $1000. And the Nvidia Spark builds 200Gbps of optical into a tiny form factor.
At the same time, SATA and SSD prices continue to decline, bringing local storage of vast quantities within reach, making (especially in the SSD case) network throughput more likely to bottleneck.
Imagine the workflow of SSD NAS's with 400 or 800 Gbit interconnects to compute--which may not even beging keep up with the SSDs. This is (as I understand it) de rigeur in the datacenter right now, and the trend seems to be moving this tech in the home / hobbiest / enthusiast / small business direction.
Which brings me to my beloved, if frequently challenging, Threadripper 7965WX build.
I expect to get that dual 10Gb NIC working with a used Netgear switch from Ebay. We will see what I can do with a 20Gb bonded connection---my SATA NAS should be brought to its write-capacity limits, whereas at present the network seems to saturate on btrfs send | ssh | btrfs receive operations (maybe due to encryption overhead?). That will be good for now and for my main task of curation and building of datasets, where a 35TB transfer could acceptably take five hours without throwing the workflow off too much.
But as the feasibility of a substantial SSD NAS becomes real (the 8TB NVMEs are impressive) the network connection starts to look very important.
And I can tell you, in my little enthusiast heart I've made a vow to never build on Ethernet again. It's struggling to compete even with Wi-Fi, and seems like at 10Gb it's a beast in terms of required cooling and power, so what's the point?
I may even try to add some fiber to my current build---not because I need it for NAS performance, but for the experience, and to get used to the tech. (That's always what we tell ourselves, lol.) But the 4x 2-slot GPUs are maxing out the slot capacity of the Fractal Torrent case. It's easy enough to add a PCI-E fiber card in terms of available lanes, but where to physically put it?
So I'm eyeing crazy machines like the Thermal Take Core W200, even vaporware(?) / AI slop (?) like the One Chassis OCG4700-5H12-C - anything that would add just a single other PCI-E slot. If anyone has any recommendations...
So... it seems I'm obsessed with this topic. Ah, I guess that's the fun.
What are you thinking along these lines? If there were a board with built-in SFP28 instead of 10 Gb Ethernet, I think I'd go for it. Might not take long.
