Is 1Gb network enough to support Plex + SMB shares + multiple remote users?

I live in a small apartment. Its wired with Cat6 Ethernet ports in the walls. I am using the Netgate 1100 pfsense router (1Gb speed), with standard TP-Link TL-SG105 5 Port 1 Gigabit Unmanaged Ethernet switches to connect my devices (I have 20+ devices on the network), including the Wifi access point and wifi devices. My ISP plan is currently 300Mbps.

Currently, my Plex Media Server is running on a separate mini-server from my file storage, so the Plex server mounts the media storage over SMB. In addition to this, I have the standard suite of Plex supporting apps (Radarr, Sonarr, etc.; running on the Plex server system) along with Usenet downloader (SABnzbd ; running on the file storage host).

I read that Cat6 Ethernet cables are rated for up to 10Gb. However, the rest of my network equipment (routers, switches, and network adapters on almost all servers) are only 1Gb. So this would be my network speed limit I think.

Considering that I want to open up my Plex server to remote users, but I also still have regular background download tasks running, in addition to the server itself accessing the storage over the network, I am wondering if 1Gb will be enough to handle all this traffic? At what points would you usually expect to see 1Gb not be enough? Supposedly 1Gb comes out to 125MB/s bandwidth, but considering all the connected devices plus traffic over SMB, cant help but wonder how close I am to the limit of what my network can support.

Thoughts? Thanks.

You are very unlikely to hit a problematic network bottleneck given the services listed.

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1 Gbps network should be plenty for the services you have described, you will encounter other bottlenecks before you hit 1 Gbps. A typical 4k stream takes less than 25 Mbps (that is little b Mega bits) and data you pull from the NAS will likely be bottle necked by HDD drive speed.

New devices often comes with 2.5 Gbps networking these days, my recommendation would be to wait until you have accumulated few 2.5 Gbps devices organically and then upgrade your switch to 2.5 Gbps that will more than double your bandwidth, will be much cheaper and easier than upgrading everything to 10 Gbps, and your existing copper wiring should work without any potential issues.

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Bro, a) welcome!

B) remote users are going to be limited by the 300mbps if your ISP the internal isn’t limiting.

C) you’ll be fine. If you get a ton of remote users I may need to put bandwidth limits on them. But that’s not likely with just a few

You may want to try and turn on jumbo frames and see if your throughput increases. Mine did. I agree that 1 Gig is enough.