2016: Starting the decline of 1 Gigabit Ethernet

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RobertFontaine

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Dec 17, 2015
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Seems like the market will be hanging on to cat5 as long as humanly possible.

The cost of pulling new wire in existing structures means we will be seeing plenty of intermediate solutions in the next 5 years plus.

While server racks are preparing for 100gbe in the data centres it seems like the infiniband equipment they are dumping makes a lot more sense for soho/home if you are willing to collect hardware and flash bios etc.

What isn't clear to me yet is whether 10gbe will become ubiquitous. 100/10 just works. Find an old cable and plug it in. 1gbe isn't a lot worse and most hardware has adopted it without much fanfare. 10 gbe not so much. I've only seen 1 retail board with on board 10gbe. Tossing the old cables and picking up a roll of Cat6e isn't bad but transitioning to sfp+ adds another layer of complexity for the retail market.

Hard to know how this will play out. Qdr/fdr or even sdr seems like the most cost effective way of getting high bandwidth low latency networking in a home dungeon lab for the foreseeable future the way I am reading it right now.

.... And then again I could be completely wrong.... :)
 

Chuckleb

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Mar 5, 2013
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@RobertFontaine Have you tried those ethernet over power adapters? I had a friend who needed to add another AP so he used one of those systems to send ethernet over power to the second location and added the AP there. Potentially easier?
 

RobertFontaine

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I haven't tried ethernet over power line at all. swmbo has a second floor office with that I've got the upstairs ap primarily for. I have the dungeon. Bandwidth for her youtube/Facebook addiction seems to be adequate. If I could get her streaming tv/video and cutting off cable I would up the bandwidth but I haven't found a practical way to make the technology transparent to her.
 

lmk

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Dec 11, 2013
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@Chuckleb @RobertFontaine just beware of the ethernet over power adapters/powerline advertised speeds; your milage /will/ vary

it can definitely be a quick and easy way to get connectivity (if it works - depending on your home's wiring)

however, there is a big delta between the advertised speeds (some show 1gigabit or even 2gigabit) and the real world usage speeds

a lot of factors play into it: the type, distance, condition, etc, of the electrical wiring

most people only achieve a fraction of the advertised speeds - e.g. a 1gigabit or 2gigabit rated adapter only provides 100megabit in use (which is equivalent to fast ethernet, not gigabit ethernet)

as with wireless networking (or even worse), the drop from advertised/theoretical speeds to the actual speeds achieved is big
 

mstone

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Mar 11, 2015
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I think once something between 1 & 10 gb is released, it'll sell like hotcakes. It's unfortunate that there was so much pushback against it at IEEE, delaying the (inevitable) rollout. (There was fear of a repeat of 100base-T4, with nobody using the standard which permitted lower-quality cables, but I think they grossly underappreciated the penetration of cat5e circa 2008 vs the penetration of cat3 circa 1998--re-cabling is a much bigger proposition than specifying a higher spec for a new cable, and at this point anything that should be cabled already is.) I think calling it for 2016 is a bit ambitious, though, since the spec isn't slated to be finalized until q3, then there'll be a delay in parts trickling down to retail.
 

Jon Massey

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Nov 11, 2015
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I think once something between 1 & 10 gb is released, it'll sell like hotcakes.
Maybe, in my experience the majority of the large installed base of Cat5e which people are unwilling to repull is that to the desktop - whether the speed bump from 1 to 2.5GBE (N-BaseT) will be sufficient to warrant purchasing new kit, and whether NBaseT NICS become common in enterprise desktop fleets I'm not so sure!
 

mstone

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Mar 11, 2015
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Maybe, in my experience the majority of the large installed base of Cat5e which people are unwilling to repull is that to the desktop - whether the speed bump from 1 to 2.5GBE (N-BaseT) will be sufficient to warrant purchasing new kit, and whether NBaseT NICS become common in enterprise desktop fleets I'm not so sure!
I can't imagine that it won't become standard on NICs and switches. Really the end game is negotiating 1/2.5/5/10 based on connection quality, power consumption, and activity level. The hardware will all get refreshed, it's the in-wall infrastructure that's eternal.
 
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mackle

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Nov 13, 2013
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This article actually came out the day that I turned off my last 100BASE-TX switch.

Of course >GBE is going to pick up speed, but I think GBE is going to be the hegemonic network speed for quite a while yet. Sure there will be a continuing roll out of the hardware for the faster connections, but it'll be to support a wider range of key connections, rather than wholesale network upgrades. I'd love NBase-T/10gbe to really hit mainstream and I'm all for >GBE to the workstation, but I'm not sure it'll happen this year.

GBE's long reign benefited from good enough computing and the rise of broadband internet. The importance of WAN speeds increased at a time when gbe was dominant, and in this day and age if its 'good enough' why bother upgrading?
 

KioskAdmin

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Jan 20, 2015
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I think once something between 1 & 10 gb is released, it'll sell like hotcakes. It's unfortunate that there was so much pushback against it at IEEE, delaying the (inevitable) rollout. (There was fear of a repeat of 100base-T4, with nobody using the standard which permitted lower-quality cables, but I think they grossly underappreciated the penetration of cat5e circa 2008 vs the penetration of cat3 circa 1998--re-cabling is a much bigger proposition than specifying a higher spec for a new cable, and at this point anything that should be cabled already is.) I think calling it for 2016 is a bit ambitious, though, since the spec isn't slated to be finalized until q3, then there'll be a delay in parts trickling down to retail.
Cisco is already selling Nbase-T gear.
 

gigatexal

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I heard on the forums a while back (now I'm paraphrasing hardcore) that due to the overhead of the tcp stack that 10gb Ethernet has higher latency and overhead etc compared to things like infiniband or some other technology. Is that true?
 

mstone

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Mar 11, 2015
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Cisco is already selling Nbase-T gear.
There's always someone selling something based on a draft spec. I don't think you'll see the mass market ethernet chipsets adopting it until it's finalized. (E.g., the i350, RTL8169, etc., that comes on your motherboard.) That said, I have been wrong before.
 

Boddy

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RE: ethernet over power adapters. I've read online that they are not agreeable with solar electricity generation, it appears that it can be incompatible with operating a solar inverter. I believe that some of the solar inverter components will not operate properly with ethernet over power adapters in use. Just something to keep in mind if you have a solar or planning to have a solar system installed.