Switches

Every homelab guide eventually tells you to “get a managed switch,” usually without saying why, or which one, or what happens if you buy the wrong one. This site has already covered when 10GbE is worth the upgrade and how to configure VLANs, bridges, and bonding once you’re inside Proxmox. This article is the piece that comes before both of those: picking the actual switch hardware sitting between your gear, the decision that either makes everything downstream easy or makes you fight your network for the next three years. ...

10GbE gear has gotten cheap enough on the used market that it shows up in nearly every “should I upgrade my network” thread on r/homelab, usually with someone insisting it changed their life and someone else insisting it did nothing for them. Both are usually telling the truth - it depends entirely on what’s actually slow in your setup right now. Here’s how to figure out which camp you’re in before you buy anything. ...