Outside the enterprise market, the transition from Gigabit to 10-Gigabit Ethernet has been rather slow. While there are growing small-business and prosumer demands for the additional bandwidth that 10G networking provides, the cost of entry is high. Until now, the availability of compliant devices has been limited to enterprise-class products that are built with corporate networks in mind, with pricing for 10-Gigabit switches starting at $800. That certainly isn’t expensive by corporate standards, but for the rest of us, it relegates adoption to cases of absolute necessity and the upper echelon of enthusiasts.

While it’s advisable to plan ahead and overprovision your network for scalability, paying extra money for ports or features that you’ll never use doesn’t make sense. So, there’s a clear need for 10G networking devices that are suitably tailored for the small business, prosumer, and enthusiast markets. Cue the ASUS XG-U2008, an unmanaged 10G networking switch available for only $249.99.

With a fanless design and sleek exterior, the XG-U2008 is perfect for unobtrusive deployment in a small office or living space. The optional rack-mount kit also allows the switch to be installed in a standard 19-inch bay.

The XG-U2008 utilizes Marvell’s 88E6190X and 88X3220 PHY transceivers to offer two 10GBase-T ports and eight Gigabit ports. 10GBase-T provides up to 10X the bandwidth of Gigabit Ethernet, making it ideal for quickly moving massive amounts of data between servers, transferring uncompressed 4K videos, and backing up large files.

Read more at Edge Up

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