Hi all!

Long time lurker on the sub as i have recently been building out my home production network over the last couple of years. I am a freelance 3D artist and i use my network to connect my boxes to each other to render 3d through deadline server. My current setup has three networked compys with an additional 2 compys coming before the end of the year.

I recently upgraded two of my boxes with nicgiga 10gbe nics and i have a third box that will continue to run at 100mbs due to being a laptop that connects via an eGPU interface.

now that i have some time and $$$ to invest in a switch, i’m looking at upgrading my lab to a 10gbe managed switch.

i’m about to pull the trigger based on info i have read here and some follow ups reviews from serve the home on youtube.

I am eventually going to run centralized NAS storage to serve all of my boxes but for the time being, i’m serving my files to deadline from my main production box for rendering.

My goal is to simply open up the internal pipe so that files read/write faster to drive during the rendering process. My setup runs on rj45 cabling with cat6 run throughout the house, so i’m hoping to keep the switch consistent with that, but i’m not opposed to running sfp+ with adapters (which seems to be a cheaper option, understanding that adapters cost money as well as may sometimes have compatibility issues)

I’ve narrowed my possible solutions to

Mokerlink

TPLink

and Microtik

I’m leaning more towards the microtik as they seem to have a pretty good rep and there’s some flex in the setup if i ever want to update to fiber, but i would be interested if anyone had experience with the other switches.

Also, i’m not an IT person at all, so if i’m misreading the capabilities of these switches or if i’m just out of my depth in general, i would definitely appreciate any critique you all have.

thanks so much, all!

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