I didn’t know that a simple UniFi network switch for under $50 would completely change how I use my NAS, but it did. Here’s a simple network upgrade that completely overhauled my home lab than I expected.
UniFi gear doesn’t have to be expensive
Although some products are quite expensive
I used to think that all UniFi equipment was very expensive. At one point it was true. You can get some really affordable UniFi products these days.
When I originally looked into buying a UniFi to upgrade my home network, the upgrade was in the thousands. Dream Machine Pro, some big network switches, the whole nine yards. I wanted to go all came outand it would be expensive. So I stopped looking at UniFi for a long time.
Finally, I was ready to upgrade my home network to 2.5Gb/sand the last company that came to mind was UniFi. Everything they made was expensive, right? Wrong. When researching 2.5GbE switches, UniFi actually stood out as one of them cheaper companies there for specifications and features.
So that was it. The cheap UniFi pass was what hooked me to the brandand it completely changed how I use my NAS from that point on.
2.5G Ethernet pass is the same price as everyone else
But it provides a fully managed network
So this 2.5GbE link has to be throttled somehow, right? I mean, it’s a cheap UniFi item – what’s the catch? There is none.
When I was looking for switches, I saw that many companies had five or eight port switches for $40-$60, but they were all brands I couldn’t name. I even ordered one because I thought it might be good, but quickly returned it when it didn’t work.
Then when I found UniFi’s Flex Mini 2.5G dongle, I tried to figure out why it was priced the way it was. The switch was under $50, offered five 2.5GbE ports (one of which is PoE), and it provides a fully managed experience without even running a UniFi gateway or router.
So I ordered the key to give it a try. Even though it was under $50, it was worth the shot. It worked as soon as I took it out of the box and it even came with a USB-C power adapter.
These days I’m powering the switch myself PoE The Dream Router 7 has a (power over ethernet) port because I’m connected to a UniFi network. I haven’t had any problems with the switch. All my NAS systems run through it and it works flawlessly for me.
Now that network transfers are faster, I use my NAS more
I didn’t realize the fix was so simple
So how has UniFi’s inexpensive network switch changed the way I use my NAS? Well, it more than doubled my transfer speed under $50.
I was afraid to move large files to the NAS because I felt it would take too long. In fact, I avoided moving files from my computers to the NAS and just used the NAS as a media server.
Once I went 2.5GbE, that everything has changed. Now I can transfer files at about 250MB/s, which is faster than 100MB/s. While it may not seem like much, what used to take 10 minutes now only takes 4, and it only extrapolates from there. A 60 minute transfer is now only 24 minutes.
I can transfer large batches of files without worrying about how long it will take. But that wasn’t the only improvement.
Now that I’m running 250MB/s transfer speeds, I can edit my Lightroom photo library directly from the NAS. This is a crazy amount of space on my MacBook, as my RAW photo collection has been around 1TB for over a decade.
Now I can only store the current year on my MacBook and have everything else on my NAS, retaining the ability to edit files without moving them to the MacBook.
It’s pretty amazing what the speed boost has done for my NAS usage. I’m not saying that you you need to go 2.5GbE on your NAS to start using it, I’m just saying it has completely changed how my NAS works in my lab.
Switching to 2.5GbE also allowed me to move my Plex server from the NAS it was running on. I’ve had Plex running for a long time on a large Lenovo RD440 NAS with a dedicated graphics card for transcoding.
After going to a lot of gigs, I was able to download Plex from the wall to a more powerful server that uses less power and just stream movies over the network. Thanks to 2.5GbE, there are no hiccups when streaming Plex, even with almost a dozen simultaneous streams.
Indeed, a standard gigabit network is what keeps my home lab going and I had no idea.
- Manufacturer
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UniFi
- Kind
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Managed Ethernet Switch
- Ports
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5 2.5Gb Ethernet Ports
The Unifi Flex Mini 2.5G Ethernet Switch is a fully managed network switch that delivers multi-gig speeds. It works both standalone and with the Unifi Network Controller, making it a versatile choice for your network setup. You get an included USB-C power adapter, though the switch can be powered via PoE+ from an uplink.
Sometimes it’s the little things that cause friction that we didn’t know were there
The thing is, I didn’t know the gigabit network was holding up my homelab and NAS usage until I fixed the problem. I just thought switching to 2.5G network would be a nice upgrade, little did I know it would completely change the way I use my NAS.
There are probably a ton of other things that do the same thing and I don’t even realize it. You need to find the little things that are holding you back and fix them for a better tomorrow.
