A home network enthusiast shares their experience switching from 10GBase-T copper SFP+ transceivers to SFP+ active optical cables (AOCs). The copper transceivers ran excessively hot even at idle, causing stability issues with 10GbE NICs. The switch to AOCs resolved the heat and reliability problems, and the thinner optical cables were easier to route. The author also notes that enterprise networking hardware offers better firmware flexibility than expected, and that dual-port NICs allow direct desktop-to-desktop links.
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