How Do You Decide When a Network Needs 10GbE?

Personally, I'm more than happy with 1Gbps.

Wiring in my house is CAT6 and more than capable of supporting 2.5 Gbps for future needs but I have no 2.5G clients and I doubt I will have them in near future.

Only place i have fiber is between my house and garage and the only reason I have fiber there is because it's an overhead cable exposed to weather and i wanted to be sure to minimize any potential damages from possible lightning strike.

If it's affordable, and you have suitable gear, well, nobody ever complained about "too much capacity" . . . .

(No 2.5G devices here either, but 32 ports of 1G will "get you there" as well . . . .)

By definition you always "need" 10GBe for the LAN use cases today, but if you are internet heavy then the pipe outside is likely way short of that number, maybe even sub 1GBe thus rendering internal use of 10GBe pointless. 2.5/5 GBe may be a thing as well, but 1 GBe is getting slow.

Do you ever drink coffee? Or tea? If yes and you find 1Gbps too slow, perhaps you should have another coffee/tea while waiting for transfer to complete? (Similarly if you smoke ... have another cigarette ...). You may find out that 1Gbps is actually too fast :rofl: