10 gigabit switch on a Linux server

usao · 06-10-2015, 04:42 PM

Im frustrated by the high cost of 10 GBE switches (10GBaseT or SFP+).
The individual Mellanox cards are really cheap, so, is there a way to take a Linux box with several pcie ports, add in the cheap cards and make my own 10 GBE switch?
Does anyone know how to go about doing this?

suicidaleggroll · 06-10-2015, 04:47 PM

It won't have anywhere close to the bandwidth you would get from a real switch with hardware switching. I'd be surprised if you could even keep up with 1 GbE.

The switches aren't that expensive...$900 will get you an 8-port 10GbE unmanaged switch from Netgear, that's cheaper than 4 dual port PCIe cards as far as I can tell.