Upgrading to 10G: Our Office Internet Journey
- tervancovan
- 2024년 10월 9일
- 3분 분량
최종 수정일: 2024년 11월 25일
The image below is the result of our 10G internet installation. Wow!
"8Gbps"!!!
I’ve never seen numbers like this in my life before.
Our 1st office looks like this.
There is another 4th floor that will be used as a server room in the future.
We also wanted the offices on the 1st and 4th floors to be on the same IP range because engineers on the first floor usually use SSH to access and control the servers on the fourth floor.
Coincidentally, our office often experienced internet outages.
Because KT (Korea Telecom) "Office Net" has a 300GB QoS limit (a kind of data usage cap), if we use more than 300GB a day, KT will reduce our office internet speed to 100Mbps. Our staff had to share 100Mbps among 50 people, so 2Mbps was the maximum speed for each staff member.
That was a nightmare during "Core Working Time" (2:00 PM ~ 4:00 PM).
So, I planned to change our internet provider from KT to LG U+ because LG U+ offers 10G internet at a reasonable price: $78 per month if you sign a 3-year contract.
I researched how to set up 10G internet for the office on YouTube.
The YouTuber mentioned a few things:
10G internet line
10G router (optional)
10G switch (optional)
10G ethernet card
10G cable
Hub rack (optional)
SPF+
So I prepared:
I’m not a network guy, so a few terms seemed confusing.
The first one was SFP+.
It looks like a socket for an optical cable, but I’ve never ever seen an "optic cable" before. So, I called "LG U+" and they recommended the "TL-SM5310-T."
After that, I made another call to "TP-Link" to ask about the difference between SFP and SFP+. They explained that the "+" means it supports 10Gbps speeds.
The second thing was the 10G cable.
It turned out to be simpler than I thought. Just check the image below.
Once I had all the information, I purchased everything online in a day and installed it.
However, I encountered a critical issue I didn’t expect.
The TX401 10G LAN card didn’t work on my Linux machine (Ubuntu 22.04) or Windows. Of course, I had already installed the driver and rebooted the system.
I spent a lot of time troubleshooting the problem.
Finally, I figured it out.
It was the motherboard (MSI B550 Gaming Edge WiFi).
The manual said that if I used all the M.2 slots, the PCI slot x16 would be disabled. I read this at 2 AM.
So, I removed the 980PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 from my motherboard, which had Windows 11 installed, and reinstalled Grub on the remaining M.2 slot where I had Linux installed, then rebooted.
IT WORKED!!!!
------------------------------------------------------- update 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------
But after a few days, the internet connection suddenly dropped during core working hours.
First, I immediately connected my PC to the modem using a short Cat.8 cable, and it worked.
Second, I accessed the ER8411 web interface (192.168.0.0.1) from my PC, which is connected to the TL-SX1008 switch, and everything was working fine.
So I called TP-Link, and they told me not to install two TL-SM5310-T modules side by side in the slots and to remove one of them. because there was a heating issue.
What???
Now, what am I supposed to do?
------------------------------------------------------- update 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------
25 Nov 2024.
"But after a few days, the internet connection suddenly dropped during core working hours."
Actually, the reason for the above issue was not "Heating of the SPF+ module."
It was "ISP (LG Uplus 10G firewall rules)."
Here is my second journey of 10G in a small office.
Anyway, to create the perfect 10G system.
I bought two media converters and two AOC cables from Amazon and installed them.
First, I made a phone call to LG Uplus to check my internet optic cable and modem. The next day, a technician came to check everything and said, "Everything is okay." and just went.
But after a while, the internet connection went down again.
My final hypothesis was the firewall rules of ISP.
So, I asked the ISP to monitor the packets.
Finally, LG Uplus said there was a buggy rule that blocked fast packets when the target IP was in the USA!
What????!!!!!
I think it was some kind of QoS
And LG firewall guy said
"Sorry, This case is the first time we've applied 10G in a small office."
Check the final internet speed measured with a total of 73 devices in use.
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