Hehehe. The Synology is a NAS box rather than a modem, but in any event well worth slotting in a 10 GbE card if you’re in the habit of shifting large amounts of data in and out of one and the rest of your network is suitably wide.

I upgraded mine and it was a ton less headaches and more performant than bonding it’s on board 4 x GbE ports.

I’m assuming if you want 2.5GigE or 10GigE, you have large data to move around. Apple includes 10GigE option on the Mac Mini because many of the use cases that people buy Mac hardware (and macOS) for is video editing of 4K or 8K footage. Before the Mini had 10GigE options, there were Thunderbolt adaptors to direct attach storage arrays (think an external array of 5 to 10 disks exclusively attached to one computer) for the speed.

This is the lowest product that supports the upgrade card, it has 2 x 1GigE ports on the back: https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/DS723+

The network upgrade card is here: https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/E10G22-T1-Mini - US import around £110 on Amazon, EU import around £130 on amazon. May be cheaper elsewhere (e.g. Broadbandbuyer). Stock levels vary.

I’ve not bought the card yet as I’ve not bought a fast enough switch, and my WAN may get to the 900/900 speeds if FTTP arrives this year…

In reply to a post by jchamier:

The network upgrade card is here: https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/E10G22-T1-Mini - US import around £110 on Amazon, EU import around £130 on amazon. May be cheaper elsewhere (e.g. Broadbandbuyer). Stock levels vary.

This is the one I put in mine last year. I paid £137 at the time. Bit more now with inflation etc.

https://www.ballicom.co.uk//synology-e10g18-t1-.p142...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

This is the one I put in mine last year. I paid £137 at the time. Bit more now with inflation etc.

Bigger Synology unit! That looks like a normal full size PCIe card.

Aye, to extend the life of my almost 6 year old DS1817+

My old 209+ was moved on (given to elderly relative) when it wouldn't get the next DSM, and I went for the 723, its nothing like the rack mount ones we had in the old office... (long since demolished).

its half height and half length.... Nearly most single port nics are..

the pcie 4.0 x1 10gbe nic is called OWC 10G Ethernet PCIe - you do need an open ended pcie slot though

I have one of these Intel X540-T2 NICs (dual port 10GBaseT) running in a Lenovo M720q mini PC and it seems to be working fine.

Not bad for now £90. I paid more last year.

In reply to a post by Taras:

its half height and half length.... Nearly most single port nics are..

but most NAS boxes are not the same size as a 1U or 2U server, or a desktop PC. (which was my point).

In the data centre we've installed 40gigabit networking, which is serious cost, but when you have clustered hardware running virtual machines it gets complicated...

Edited by jchamier (Wed 28-Jun-23 08:44:22)

yup an pcie 2.1 x 8 slot required. Fine if you don't want to use multiple gfx cards or even game on a modern system.. And that was my point . Luckily networking just like storage is bursty in nature so some of the pcie lane issues aren't so much of an issue, but space is.