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There is a counterintuitive truth that bandwidth gets cheaper as it’s increased. As with many things, the more of something you want, the more expensive it is, but today I’m here to show you that this is no longer the case – and I have the receipts!
Let’s get right into it then. So looking at the numbers and using recent market pricing I have compiled the below table to show you why bandwidth gets cheaper as you scale.
How can 250Gbps beat 10Gbps?
To start, I looked at slow NICs, at 1Gbps, taking the cost of the NIC on the server side then also exploring the costs of a 48port switch of the same speed. I then divided out the cost of the NIC by how many ports it supports to get a cost per NIC port. I did the same for the switch. This gives us a cost per NIC and cost per switchport at various speeds, 1, 10 , 25, 100 & even 250 Gbps. Finally, I divided the cost of both by the speed they provide to get us a cost per Gbps per port. I did both the NIC and the switch because omitting the switchport woudn’t be fair since the switch is a high cost and critical for serving bandwidth.
Costs per NIC per Gbps at various bandwidth configurations
Speed (Gbps) | NIC | NIC Price (USD) | Cost per NIC port (USD) | Cost per NIC per Gbps (USD/Gbps) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 50 | 50 | 50 | |
10 | 300 | 150 | 15 | |
25 | 200 | 100 | 4 | |
100 | 600 | 300 | 3 | |
250 | 1500 | 750 | 3 |
Costs per Switchport per Gbps at various bandwidth configurations
Speed (Gbps) | Switch | Switch price (USD) | Cost per Switchport (USD) | Cost per port per Gbps (USD/Gbps) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Dell Networking N2048 | 1000 | 20.83 | 20.83 |
10 | Dell S4148F-ON | 9340 | 194.58 | 19.46 |
25 | Dell S5148F-ON | 12000 | 250.00 | 10.00 |
100 | Dell Z9148-ON | 35000 | 729.17 | 7.29 |
250 | Dell S6000-ON | 50000 | 1041.67 | 4.17 |
The pricing data I took from available online sources. Everyone will get difference prices and list prices are typically unreliable with different vendors offering different discounts.
What scenarios does this work for?
As you can see from the tables above, the cost of bandwidth decreases as you use higher bandwidth hardware. This is particularly important to consider when you’re running multiple links to switches to improve your bandwidth (For example in a vSphere environment). Naturally, you’ll want to ensure NIC redundancy in your networking design but if you’re running additional NICs for bandwidth improvements, it could be cheaper and simpler to upgrade your networking stack instead!
Other savings
Even a simple consolidation exercise of network connections can have a significant cost (CAPEX and Operational Expenditure) It’s not just about saving the cabling, but at scale you can start to reduce the number of switches which saves on space, cooling and various other operational expenditures like asset management, warranty, maintenance and patching. Putting those savings into a network upgrade can give you more bandwidth at minimal additional cost.
Conclusion
I suspect for many, consolidating traffic over a lower NIC count will be cost advantageous. What do you think? – Would fewer, but higher bandwidth hardware actually lower your bandwidth TCO?
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