this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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I wired my house with cat6 when I moved in. The overall setup looks like 10G fiber to the house -> 2.5G capable router -> 2.5G capable NAS running *arr stack. Also off the router is a single cat6 run downstairs -> 8 port 1G unmanaged switch, which is connected to my desktop, work dock, parters dock, TV, and backhaul run to the back of house wifi extender. The desktop, both docks and wifi extender are 2.5G capable. The TV is 100M. This has been extremely reliable. I plan on upgrading the switch to a 10g capable one at some point, and then the router. Since the switch is unmanaged, is there a good way to know when it is the limiting factor and I should update it?
An unmanned switch? Nothing concrete.
A managed switch can give you telemetry, like port utilisation, and you can observe how much upstream is in use.
My concern is that you have a 1g switch connecting 2.5g capable devices to a 2.5g capable upstream network. That's a bottleneck that I would want to eliminate. I know serve the home has a roundup of 2.5g switches that might be useful for you. I'm not saying you should switch to managed either, you may be well served by an unmanaged switch, and it will save you money. The telemetry for managed switches usually requires a system to collect and store it, usually an NMS, or network monitoring/management system.
Some manufacturers build NMS style telemetry into their products, ubiquiti does this to a limited extent. Other vendors may be better or have nothing at all. Something to think about when picking gear, if you like that sort of visibility. NMS usually operates over SNMP, which can become a whole thing; but for monitoring, setting up read only SNMP can be rather easy.
A word of caution. 10G and 2.5/5G were developed independently, and 10G came first. It was expensive which is why 2.5/5g Ethernet became a thing. Because of this checkered past, there's a lot of 10G equipment that will not support operating at 2.5 or 5gbps. So if you get a 10G switch, check if there's 2.5G, or 5G capability separately, or included on the 10G ports.
In my experience, most 10G ports are 1 or 10G, with nothing in between. Most 2.5G ports can't do 10G. So the best idea would be to have a switch with a couple of 10G for fast uplinks and some 2.5G connections for your devices. Unless you can find a unicorn of a switch that supports all speeds on all ports, a switch split between 2.5G and 10G ports is probably your best bet.
Good luck.
Oh, ok thanks! I’ve been wondering about the split 2.5/10G switches I’ve seen and wondered why. That makes a lot of sense now! I’ll take a look at them again.
What's the pros & cons of a managed vs unmanaged switch? Or of just running multiple cables out of the router? (Assuming your router has sufficient ports.)
My router only has four downstream ports, and due to the layout of my house I only want to run one cable from the router to my home office anyway. If it had enough ports and the house was laid out differently I wouldn’t have bothered with the switch.
Unmanaged switches are usually quite a bit cheaper and just work. You plug everything in and that’s it. Managed switches need configuring and cost more. I paid $25 for my 8 port 10/100/1000 switch, while the managed version is about $120. With a managed switch you can do things like turn individual ports on and off, traffic limit and monitor per port, and other fancy networking things that I’ve never bothered with.
Ah that's interesting. Thanks!
What does 10/100/1000 mean?
That’s that speed the ports are capable of. 10/100/1000 megabits per second. Most things with an Ethernet port nowadays are 10/100/1000 capable, and 2.5Gb is becoming reasonably common.
Weirdly, Roku and other smart TVs are often only 100Mb capable since 4k streaming only requires about 60Mb and if you are squeezing pennies a 1Gb port is a bit more expensive.
10Gb is just starting to get available for high end consumer devices.
So is it some ports support 10, some support 100, and some support the full 1000? Or how does it work with the three different speeds?
All of the ports support all three speeds. When you first plug in, there is a quick round of negotiations where both sides basically say “Here are the speeds I can work, what about you?” Then they go with the highest that both support.
Wait so what would happen if it was only 1000? Like, can't any connection automatically support up to its limit? What's the advantage of explicitly supporting lower numbers?
Support for older/slower connections does get dropped sometimes. I’ve seen devices that are 100/1000 only, and I had a fiber->ethernet box that only supported 1G/10G one one port, and 10/100/1000 on the other.
So what happens when that occurs? Does it just stop working, or does it work at the lower speed despite the lack of official "support" for it?
If the two sides don’t have a common speed, then it just doesn’t work.
Oh damn, really? So do normal home routers have to support basically every possible speed? Because I don't think I've ever encountered or heard of someone encountering a failure due to a speed mismatch.
Basically, yes, but there are only three speeds in common use. 10/100/1000M will be enough to support for basically every consumer device out there. 2.5G is starting to become common in routers and some desktop or high end docks, and 10G is starting to show up in high end prosumer devices, but they can usually also support at least 100/1000M. There isn’t much 10M gear still out there except in very specific industrial applications. Really, if your router supports 100/1000 it will cover 99% of the devices in the wild.
Oh very interesting. Thanks for being so patient! I had no idea about this. I always just assumed that if a device said it supported 100M, that necessarily meant that if you connect a 10M device up to it, it'll automatically take the lower speed. Like a car with a max speed of 10 can go on a road with a speed limit of 100...it'll just be limited to 10. I didn't realise it had to sync up like that.