Casper-folks: Hoping to short-circuit a fair amount of research here in the hope that someone has had to do this already. I'll soon be looking to connect 10-20 ROACH boards by 10 gbe to a data acquisition computer(s).
It seems like the smartest way of doing that is getting a 16-port switch or potentially two 8-port switches. But the 10 Gbe port on the ROACH seems to be CX4 which I take to be a less popular connector variety. What kind of switches have ROACH users out there used to connect up a bunch of boards? Are there switches out there to convert CX4 to something with a reach longer than the 15m Wikipedia quotes as the limit of CX4. 15m is very borderline for our needs. The prices seem to vary widely. We do not need network admin tools or anything fancy. In fact our data rates could probably go over 10Mb cabling, but the 10Gbe interface of the ROACH is more convenient from the firmware perspective. This is more of a multiplexer than a switch. Tom
