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10 Gigabit Networking – Are there affordable NICs out there?
Hi there,
I’m looking to start gradually building a 10 Gigabit home network for some video production, and other largely disk intensive work (storage and speed).
Before anyone mentions, I am aware of the cost etc! Basically I’m looking at creating a very, fast medium sized storage pool for working directly off, and/or rendering to etc, but external to the machine doing the processing, in order to seperate the I/O, and not bog one machine down. As well as a larger more permanent storage pool in that server as well.Naturally to do this, I’d like some blazing fast connection to take advantage of the RAID, or SSD’s speed that will be in the server, so I’ve been investigating different options, and concluded that a direct 10 Gigabit network between two machines (switchless, and possiblillity of more later if using dual port network cards) using the 10GBASE-T standard over CAT6 would be the cheapest and most apropriate option (distance to server is 18 meters of cable, so most other options like fibre, direct attatch copper, etc will be expensive, and costly to add additional machines later).
However obviously researching 10GBASE-T cards has lead to some very expensive options ($500NZD-$1000NZD cards), though still much cheaper and expandable compated to something like a USB3 or thunderboth NAS etc.
I was wondering if there was anyone out there who might know of any other adapters that are slightly cheaper, before I went out and spent the money needlessly? Second hand is one option, but so far I’ve only managed to find one Australian seller with an older intel based card willing to ship internationally.
Feel free to discuss other such extreme networking personal projects and experiences etc!
Thanks!
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7 Replies
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1Gig Ethernet can do up to 100 MB/sec – which means that it can handle any 1080 resolution – like any of the ProRes resolutions, including ProRes4444, which is 42 MB/sec.
So anyone that needs higher than 100 MB/sec (the people who need 10Gb Ethernet cards) are doing 4K work etc (and not always, as RED .r3d files don’t require more bandwidth). So you are saying that you need the crazy high bandwidth of 400 – 800 MB/sec because you are working with 4K files in some uncompressed codec or dpx, or something like that, and that means that you are dealing with ARRI and RED cameras, and you are telling me that you don’t have $500 for a 10GbE card ??????? Is that what you are telling me ? Because if I find out that you are GIVING AWAY YOUR SERVICES for working on the highest end quality that is currently being offered in the world, I will have to simply fly to Australia with a hammer, and fix this situation right now.
Your student film does not need Dragon 6K footage, and if in fact you are a professional, and are giving away your services for virtually free (which is why you find $500 SO EXPENSIVE for the hardware that you need, when your clients work with $60,000 cameras), then you need to be punished.
And there ain’t no thunderbolt NAS. Period.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Woa, hold on a sec there.
The last film I completed Was shot in DNxHD with a bit-rate around 180-190mbps, using an external recorder.
The bit-rate of the Panasonic GH4 is up to 100mbps at 4K resolution – and that’s hardly an expensive pro camera.
Until recently I was experimenting with grading that footage in Adobe Speedgrade, which for a while only worked taking dpx, which meant rendering out the large files (even if they could be deleted later). Software like maya and nuke also work with such large still image sequences. I don’t see those workflows as so ridiculous.It’s not a question of budgets and solutions being fit for purpose. This isn’t some poor business decision that’s going to see a client project end in a catastrophic failure, because there isn’t a client. I’m just an enthusiast looking to experiment, learn, and play with some new stuff, the same as someone else would spend $1000 on sport equipment, or some other general interest.
Is that so wrong?
You’re 100% correct though – I meant thunderbolt ‘DAS’.
Also I live in New Zealand.
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if you have 2 Mac Mini’s with Thunderbolt ($599 a piece US), and get a couple of Promise SanLink2 boxes (10GbE) at $520 each, you can experiment at a VERY low cost – just in line with the price of the
GH4.wonderful Thunderbolt DAS (direct attached storage) come from Promise, Areca, Maxx Digital and Netstor. There are smaller units from Lacie, G-Tech, OWC, and Cal Digit, that all work very well with the Mac’s.
You will find that you will get at least 3 – 4 times the bandwidth over Cat6 cable with 10GbE than you get with 1GbE over the same piece of cable !
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Don’t confuse megabyte with megabit. 100Mbps for the GH4 is actually about 12.5MBps (the capital B makes it megabyte vs the lower case b of megabit). You could run almost 9 layers of that GH4 4k footage over 1 Gbps ethernet that is standard on every mac sold.
That DNxHD footage was actually only 22MBps, still plenty of room for that in a gigabit connection.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Indeed, you’re correct. Forgot that conversion. Though I just noticed the GH4 can do 200 with All-Intra as well. Mostly though the things I’m wanting to remedy are large sustained file copies (particular for moving project files to work on, and to ‘offline’ completed work to the server), as well as those big DPX and other renders for when I need to.
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Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re talking purely about capabilities of ‘streaming’ the data. With a faster connection, and faster disks, there is much room to speed up the rendering of the output. While the gigabit connection may be fast enough for working, it can be a real bottle neck when it comes to rendering it out. I often check disk usage when rendering and its sitting right up at max constantly.
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Thanks! I’m surprised at the NZ price on that SANLink box though – $1,199.00! That’s definitely not the exchange rate haha.
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