Thanks in part to our readers' comments on the back of the new Realtek 10 Gbps Ethernet solutions, we discovered a company that produces what appears to be the only 5 Gbps Ethernet switches in the entire world and it just so happens that they are attending Computex this week. The company goes under the name of Cirinet or Sirivision in China, but after our chat with them at the show, it appears that Apple has taken an issue with the company name, although it might not matter, since the company is largely an ODM/OEM. The company offers two 5 Gbps switches, both are eight port switches and are built around Realtek hardware.

The product on display at Computex is called the SR-S5G3008 and it's an 8-port managed switch, with the unmanaged model being the SRS5G1008. The SR-S5G3008 is a fully managed L3 switch and rather unusually, the company even claims to offers up its firmware for the switch under GPL terms, so at least in theory, it would be possible to download the source code and compile your own version of it. We did also ask about potential retail pricing and the company suggested a price range in the US$150-200 bracket for the unmanaged version. However, with the advent of the new Realtek 10 Gbps PHY, they expect the price difference between a 5 Gbps and a 10 Gbps version, otherwise identical, since the same switching IC would be used, to be less than US$50 in retail. This suggests that 5 Gbps switches might be dead before they've even hit the market, at least if Realtek delivers on their power consumption figures, as both options could be fanless, an advantage these two 5 Gbps switches have over 10 Gbps switches today.