The importance of building a solid foundation for your home network cannot be understated. John Cage summed it up perfectly when he said “The network is the computer” back in 1984. It’s essential that your network has a fast, reliable Ethernet backbone to enable your superfast Wi-Fi, TV’s, computers, and NAS devices. The most future-proof version of this is 10GbE networking and this should be the standard on which you build.

The Ethernet standard, first developed in the 1970s, evolved from 10 to 100Mbps, where it formed the basis of most networks until the introduction of 1Gbps Ethernet at the turn of the millennium. 1Gbps has been with us for over two decades, and it’s simply not fast enough for a modern network. 10Gbps Ethernet (10GbE) has been around for a long time and will provide an excellent upgrade for your home network.

5 Wireless connections alone are not good enough for a modern home network

Wi-Fi 6 could provide speeds up to 10Gbps, but you’ll never see it

The advances in wireless network standards have been astonishing. With Wi-Fi 6 we’re seeing maximum theoretical speeds nearing 10Gbps. Wi-Fi 7 and beyond will likely see those rates race past that. The problem is that good Wi-Fi networking is often severely limited by the signal quality that devices get as you move further away from or obscure the router. Worse yet, you may not even get coverage throughout your whole house due to interference.

Wi-Fi only network problems

The solutions to poor Wi-Fi coverage and speed generally revolve around a depressing mix of buying various bits of additional wireless network equipment to help. A merry-go-round of mesh network units, access points, or even the dreaded range extenders are deployed in the hope that something helps. Building a reliable superfast Wi-Fi network can be incredibly complex and costly, especially if you have a difficult or large house to cover.

Underpinning Wi-Fi mesh or access points with fast Ethernet changes the game

If you only intend to make use of Wi-Fi as the standard to which all your devices connect, having your access points or mesh devices connected to a 10GbE capable wired network will give you the most flexible, future-proof, and reliable foundation.

As Wi-Fi routers, access points, and mesh units improve and provide 2.5, 5 and 10GbE ports, you’ll have the capability to upgrade at will. In the meantime, it will ensure that all your Wi-Fi mesh or access points can talk to each other at the back end to deliver the fastest speeds possible.

4 File sizes are huge now - stop waiting around

Take full advantage of your superfast storage

Back in the '90s, 1Gbps might have been about right for transferring data between two machines which were using old spinning HDDs, but it’s not anymore. With the advent of SSDs and more recently NVMe storage, these drives are going underutilized, leaving performance on the table. A standard SSD will be able to soak up around five times more data than a 1Gbps connection can chuck out. A 10Gbps connection will allow full utilization of your SSD with room to spare.

Make file transfers and backing up less time-consuming

When it comes to moving data around a network, you're going to want the most efficient option. File sizes have certainly increased, plus the sheer amount of data we have accumulated is ever-increasing. When backing up data between PCs or NAS, speed is everything. Let’s say you're working with uncompressed video files. A relatively small file of this type could take an hour or so to make its way over a 1GbE network. That same transfer will shrink down to minutes with its 10GbE counterpart.

When it comes to working with large files, time can literally be money, so it pays to invest in a network which will provide the throughput that your kit deserves. If you’re a NAS user, you may need to move all your data from one NAS to another. 10GbE can turn days into hours.

3 Building a 10GbE network is not expensive

But upgrading your Wi-Fi network to reach 10Gbps speeds will be

After all, if you want the latest and fastest Wi-Fi systems, you’ll have to invest significant money in buying a new router or mesh system. Will your computers and devices be able to take advantage of these new standards? It's unlikely without buying more add-on cards or even replacing things completely. The constant upgrades required to get better Wi-Fi speeds will easily eclipse the investment you make in a 10GbE network long before you'll get those speeds.

Perspective is everything when it comes to buying decisions

The problem that most folks have when they look at the cost of 10GbE is that it seems pricey compared to that of 1GbE. Due to the proliferation of 1GbE, there are plenty of kits which you can pick up cheaply. But this is a false economy. If you want to take full advantage of your computer's rapid storage and CPU power, why invest in 1GbE if it’s just going to be a bottleneck?

Prices for 10GbE network cards and switches have dropped significantly and are certainly affordable now when building the foundations of a good home network. The secondhand market for this kit is also very healthy these days too.

The major cost of your 10GbE installation will likely be getting the Ethernet cable installed by a professional, or your time if you are a DIYer. If you can do it yourself, the Cat 6a cable is not expensive. Once you have installed your cabling, this provides a solid foundation on which to build a network fit for speed and range. Build it for 10GbE, and you won’t need to keep upgrading it time and again like you’d need to with a Wi-Fi-only network.

2 Faster Ethernet adapters are becoming standard

Hop skip and jump your way to 10Gbps

After decades of being stuck with 1Gbps Ethernet adapters, we are finally seeing faster network adapters appearing as options on motherboards. 2.5GbE and 5GbE network options are becoming easily available and provide a much-needed pit stop on our way to a full 10GbE implementation. Having that fast underpinning means you can upgrade your various devices in ways that make sense until you can utilize the full 10Gbps speed.

You can take a layered approach to speeds, mixing 1Gbps networking with higher speed 10Gbps equipment in the same network. Focus initially on the devices which make the most sense for 10Gbps.

1 Unleash the full potential of your server or NAS

Network bottlenecks are a real issue when making the most of your resources

For those of you who are running home lab servers or high-end NAS systems, you are likely running multiple docker containers and virtual machines. The reason why you’re running them is that they provide reliable network services for you, your home, and beyond. The addition of plentiful, low latency bandwidth will allow your server to provide speedy access to resources where you won't have to worry about bottlenecks caused by a 1GbE network card being overloaded. 10GbE will simply allow more devices to access resources at the same time at great speeds.

Professionals want to get files to clients as fast as possible

Internet speeds are not remaining static. 1Gbps fiber is here, and as companies roll out full fiber implementations, 10Gbps broadband options will cease being highly specialized and will just become a standard consumer offering.

With many professionals now working from home on large video and audio projects, some are already finding that it pays to have the fastest possible fiber to speed up transfers for work projects. Equipping the main server or NAS with 10GbE capability will allow it to take full advantage of these speeds.