I have nothing 40Gbit, so I'd not even considered CAT8 cables, now you have me curious about their wholesale price, lol. I'm only now looking at upgrading my LAN to 2.5Gbit, as all the connected gear is Gig-E, so the only real advantage will be the uplink speed at this time, but that will of course eventually change.
I've been trying to get my friend into 2.5 but it's not really that feasible when you're dealing with the commercial equipment. Most of the managed switches are still 1gb w/ 10gb uplinks. He's actually using a Cisco Poe switch that I got really for a spare, it's 48 ports w/ 4x sfp that's only gigabit, doesn't even have a use for Poe but it's what I had available that would work for him.
Is that old Cisco a 2960? LOL
Actually yes they are the c2960s and I have a few of them stacked together, including some that have 2x sfp+ that I had connected my servers using dac cables. When I worked in IT the manager loved Meraki AP's and was over the moon when Cisco purchased them. Those 2960's you can get for practically dirt cheap on eBay now, even less than what I paid for mine. I mentioned it to my friend they are down in the $30-$40 range now. He needs an L3 switch or at the very least maybe an L2 with some L3 features.
Yeah, I've had a LOT of those switches, were common pulls from healthcare facilities when they were doing a refresh. Usually the stacking ones with the stack modules and cables. Great switches, last forever.
