Hi everyone, I’m planning to replace my BPI R64 with the R4. The question that worries me is the heat and power consumption of the 10G SFP ethernet module. Right now, I don’t need 10g. The cables (CAT6A) are perfectly fine, but there’s no scenario where 2.5G/5G would not be enough. The ethernet switch at the other end supports 1/2.5/5/10gbe, but is there a way I could let it run at less heat and use less power? like eg, using “ethtool eth2 speed 1000” or something? does it support EEE? thx
With fiber or dac cable it work perfectly fine.
not for me: the uplink cable is cat 6A STP, not fiber, and the port on the uplink switch is also TP only. is there any way I can downclock the SFP+ speeds?
basicly you can set speed to 5 or 2.5 GBit/s via ethtool, if your sfp supports these lower speeds, but i’m not sure if this will have any effect on power consumption
at least it’s worth a shot 
any idea about EEE?
Reducing the speed can indeed reduce the power consumption of TP SFP modules – but just using an SFP module made for 1G or 2.5G is still a magnitude lower than any 10G modules even if operating at 1G or 2.5G speeds. And they are very cheap compared to 10G-capable ones.
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And would a regular TP SFP (let’s say a R3 2.5G TP SFP module) work in the R4 SFP+ slot? If so, it may be what I’m looking for
Yes, but with one exception: TP-LINK TL-SM410U is not detect in the R4 for electrical reasons. All other 1G and 2.5G modules I have tested by now work as expected.