I wonder why they are including a 5G port. There does not seem to be a lot of gear that uses it. An additional 1/2.5G or 10G SFP would make more sense.
> There's 30$ usb-c adapters out now. Where-as 10Gbe is usually $130+.
Sure, but if you include another SFP+ port, you can run that at 1, 2.5, 5, or 10gbit. Another SFP+ port gives you a BUNCH of options (including the "copper, fiber, or twinax?" option). A 5Gbit copper port locks you in to just that one configuration.
As for the expense of SFP+ modules, go check out the 10Gtek company. The optical ones are very inexpensive [0], and I've had eight of their optical SFP+ modules in my home networking hardware for many, many years with no problems whatsoever. I expect the copper ones to be just as reliable.
[0] And their copper ones are on the low side of average price
5GBASE-T can run on Cat5e/Cat6 cabling which people probably already have. This makes the router a viable product, which can improve your home network performance with minimal investment, just by swapping out your old router.
OTOH, the dual SFP+ configuration is more on the exotic side. It may make sense on some professional setting (or some outlier home network configurations - like yours), but I guess this is not the intended market.
The operator of the device. Who were you thinking of?
> 5GBASE-T can run on Cat5e/Cat6 cabling which people probably already have.
There are SFP and SFP+ modules that will do 1, 2.5, 5, and 10GBASE-T just fine. If the operator wants to run 1GBASE-T, they can. If the operator wants to run 10GBASE-[SL]R, they can do that, too. Options.
> The dual SFP+ configuration is more on the exotic side.
1) Used to be that having a gigabit Ethernet port was on the exotic side, too. (If we go far enough back, 10mbit was hella fancy.) Times change.
2) Here are two SFP+ ports for ~140 USD. [0] Here are four for 150USD. [1] Times change, man.
I can plug that port into an existing 10G switch and get 5G over that link, which can be a nice sweetspot (10G can be excessive in terms of power/heat) while we can fully saturate one of the 2.5G ports routed over it without saturating the uplink.
I hope the reason is that they'd have to remove several ports to upgrade that hard-wired 5Gbit port to a 10Gbit SFP+ port. Otherwise, it's very, very silly what they've done.
It figures that Realtek is a key part of the story. The availability of Realtek PHYs and NICs is what's finally allowing 2.5GbE and 5GbE to go mainstream for consumer equipment. Aquantia got bought by Marvell and ended up with enterprise-level pricing on all their stuff. Intel completely tanked their reputation for NICs with a few failed attempts to implement 2.5GbE support, and haven't even tried to introduce a consumer-grade 5GbE option. But now that Realtek is in the game, 2.5GbE is widespread in new desktop motherboards and fairly cheap in USB Ethernet adapters.
