New Ethernet Standard Brings 5x The Speed Without Disruptive Cable Changes

[Megalith]

Want to go beyond 1 Gb/s with existing Cat5e and Cat6 cables? Now you officially can. The IEEE’s new Ethernet specification will allow traditional cabling to hit 5 Gb/S. It will also allow connectivity to 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points.

…the IEEE has ratified a new Ethernet specification -- IEEE P802.3bz – that defines 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T, boosting the current top speed of traditional Ethernet five-times without requiring the tearing out of current cabling. The Ethernet Alliance wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks.

 

[steakman1971]

Curious when the consumer gear becomes available. I have all CAT 5e in my house. It would be a total pain in the butt to replace with CAT6. I move around large media files - the extra bandwidth would be nice for that.

 

[toast0]

If this is actually less expensive than 10GBase-T, great, but this thread from 2011, says intel was ok with 10GBase-T over cat5e to 20m, which covers most of my in-home runs. I also have pretty good access, if I needed to recable; the exception is the one run between buildings where I'm running 1000Base-T over a section of cat3, because it was there and I'm not able to pull a replacement. Running 1000Base-T over cat3 doesn't follow the spec either, but it works, I wouldn't expect to get anymore out of that run though.

 

[mjz_5]

It's 2016 and 10Gb networks are still not affordable for home use. I don't understand!

 

[Streiw]

It's 2016 and 10Gb networks are still not affordable for home use. I don't understand!

Blame the FTC/Congress. Until money stops padding their pockets, they aren't in any rush to force cable companies to expand their infrastructures.

 

[Ultima99]

Blame the FTC/Congress. Until money stops padding their pockets, they aren't in any rush to force cable companies to expand their infrastructures.

I'm not following you. What do cable companies have with the desire for 10Gb Ethernet replacing 1Gb for home use. We're talking switches, routers, and PCs.

 

[Stoly]

Not complainig but I was expecting 50gb

 

[Streiw]

I'm not following you. What do cable companies have with the desire for 10Gb Ethernet replacing 1Gb for home use. We're talking switches, routers, and PCs.

Because consumer networking gear has no reason to expand to 10Gb specifications when 90% of the US can't even get 1Gbps fiber to their home. It's called trickle down economics.

 

[Ultima99]

Because consumer networking gear has no reason to expand to 10Gb specifications when 90% of the US can't even get 1Gbps fiber to their home. It's called trickle down economics.

Yeah that has nothing to do with it. Your internal network speed has always been faster than your Internet connection. We've had 1Gb Ethernet forever and 100Mbit before that. Look at all the routers that used to be prevalent with the WAN port being only 10Mbit, then 100Mbit, and these days 1Gbit, while the switch side has always been available with a higher speed.

Hell, even Wi-Fi with 802.11ac is approaching GbE speeds and they're already working on the next standard which will be even faster. Fact is 10GbE is long overdue and the speed of consumer networking equipment has never been dependent on the speed of internet connections.

 

[Streiw]

Yeah that has nothing to do with it. Your internal network speed has always been faster than your Internet connection. We've had 1Gb Ethernet forever and 100Mbit before that. Look at all the routers that used to be prevalent with the WAN port being only 10Mbit, then 100Mbit, and these days 1Gbit, while the switch side has always been available with a higher speed.

Hell, even Wi-Fi with 802.11ac is approaching GbE speeds and they're already working on the next standard which will be even faster. Fact is 10GbE is long overdue and the speed of consumer networking equipment has never been dependent on the speed of internet connections.

No, it's never been dependent on home internet connections. But companies aren't going to be inclined to bring enterprise tech to Joe Schmo consumers when 99% of people don't need/want it in their home. Demand dictates supply in these niche markets, and until we get people with 1Gbps fiber in their home as the common denominator, then good luck trying to get cheap consumer grade hardware that surpasses those speeds.

 

[Ultima99]

No, it's never been dependent on home internet connections. But companies aren't going to be inclined to bring enterprise tech to Joe Schmo consumers when 99% of people don't need/want it in their home. Demand dictates supply in these niche markets, and until we get people with 1Gbps fiber in their home as the common denominator, then good luck trying to get cheap consumer grade hardware that surpasses those speeds.

From the Wikipedia article on these new standards: This implementation is intended to support high-bandwidth wireless access points (802.11ac / 802.11ax) which exceed the speed capabilities of existing 1000BASE-T Power over Ethernet connections
2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So we've got Wi-Fi exceeding 1GbE as I already stated. Sure seems like we have demand to me.

 

[jwcalla]

I would love to be able to transfer >1Gbps between computers since storage read / writes are far higher than that.

 

[Ultima99]

I would love to be able to transfer >1Gbps between computers since storage read / writes are far higher than that.

Exactly. Non premium Wi-Fi, mass storage, and even the lucky ones with Gig internet options are all approaching or even exceeding wired Ethernet unless you spend big $$$ on 10GbE.

I hope this 2.5 and 5Gb deal gets put into the mainstream quickly. On the downside this development just put off the urgency for 10GbE.

Maybe by time we get a Z370 chipset we'll have this stuff on our motherboards.

 

[Stiletto]

It's 2016 and 10Gb networks are still not affordable for home use. I don't understand!

Don't worry, dude! Once we pass net neutrality all that will go away!

...oh.

 

[gulguran]

Yeah that has nothing to do with it. Your internal network speed has always been faster than your Internet connection. We've had 1Gb Ethernet forever and 100Mbit before that. Look at all the routers that used to be prevalent with the WAN port being only 10Mbit, then 100Mbit, and these days 1Gbit, while the switch side has always been available with a higher speed.

Hell, even Wi-Fi with 802.11ac is approaching GbE speeds and they're already working on the next standard which will be even faster. Fact is 10GbE is long overdue and the speed of consumer networking equipment has never been dependent on the speed of internet connections.

I really hope ssd performance causes an explosion in 10gb. I have been using it for a year and honestly copying files is depressing at 1gb and I always heard how blah blah disks weren't fast enough to matter etc. Maybe now people will want it more. The netgear switches have been really good for 700.00 but still that's costly.

 

[Ultima99]

I really hope ssd performance causes an explosion in 10gb. I have been using it for a year and honestly copying files is depressing at 1gb and I always heard how blah blah disks weren't fast enough to matter etc. Maybe now people will want it more. The netgear switches have been really good for 700.00 but still that's costly.

With these new standards I'm betting we're going to see 2.5 and 5Gb in the consumer and office environments while 10Gb will stay locked up tight in server racks and backbones.

 

[EvilWays]

Great, you can keep your cabling, but your equipment will have to be updated to use it.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

They are talking 5x gigabit.

We already have 10G-BaseT.

Granted, if you want the full 300+ft runs you'll need Cat6a cables, but you you can get about 180ft with cat6. Probably won't go very far (or at all) with Cat5e though.

 

[rigurat]

Better to just get 10 GbE. It's been standardized for a while and already available.

It IS expensive, no argument there, but it's one of the best options if you need to go faster than gigabit ethernet right now.

My home network setup is 10 gigabit ethernet. I'm never going back.

 

[EvilWays]

They are talking 5x gigabit.

We already have 10G-BaseT.

Granted, if you want the full 300+ft runs you'll need Cat6a cables, but you you can get about 180ft with cat6. Probably won't go very far (or at all) with Cat5e though.

The problem is the cost of equipment is not reasonable for everybody. I couldn't find a NIC on NewEgg that does 10G-BaseT for less than $300. Not to mention the cost of switches/routers.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

The problem is the cost of equipment is not reasonable for everybody. I couldn't find a NIC on NewEgg that does 10G-BaseT for less than $300. Not to mention the cost of switches/routers.

This new standard uses existing switches too? That changes everything.

 

[Ducman69]

I have been using it for a year and honestly copying files is depressing at 1gb and I always heard how blah blah disks weren't fast enough to matter etc.

Heck, even simple cheap archival storage drives, setup four in RAID0, are plenty fast to saturate a gig network. And before anyone bitches, I prefer two identical storage boxes in RAID0, as that way I have performance, and if one of them dies its no big deal, and there's no interruption of service.

I can't wait! I already dropped two CAT6 cables into each room (one spare for redundancy).

 

[Exavior]

This new standard uses existing switches too? That changes everything.

No you would still have to buy new switches also. What his point was is that if this will let you use your old wiring and for argument sake lets say there is a perfect cost difference between all these products where if a 1Gbps object cost X and a 10Gbps object cost Y then 2.5Gbps is 1/4th the different between the two and 5Gbps is half the difference.

By the time you buy a new NIC for every device, and a new router, and a few switch that is a lot of extra cost adding up. Compared to spending a fraction of that is able to upgrade to a slower standard. Then add in the cost of rewiring everything.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

No you would still have to buy new switches also. What his point was is that if this will let you use your old wiring and for argument sake lets say there is a perfect cost difference between all these products where if a 1Gbps object cost X and a 10Gbps object cost Y then 2.5Gbps is 1/4th the different between the two and 5Gbps is half the difference.

By the time you buy a new NIC for every device, and a new router, and a few switch that is a lot of extra cost adding up. Compared to spending a fraction of that is able to upgrade to a slower standard. Then add in the cost of rewiring everything.

Well, it looks like you have to buy new NIC's and switches for everything anyway. The only cost savings is rewiring.

That being said, if your runs are 180ft or shorter and you have cat6 you don't need to rewire for 10GBaseT

 

[Exavior]

Well, it looks like you have to buy new NIC's and switches for everything anyway. The only cost savings is rewiring.

That being said, if your runs are 180ft or shorter and you have cat6 you don't need to rewire for 10GBaseT

so if it cost $200 to buy a switch and 20 2Gbps nics, or $5000 for the same with 10Gbps you aren't saving money with the 2Gbps?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

so if it cost $200 to buy a switch and 20 2Gbps nics, or $5000 for the same with 10Gbps you aren't saving money with the 2Gbps?

Sure, that would be cheaper, but that article says nothing about NIC's and Switches being cheaper.

I would predict them being much more expensive than gigabit. The only thing keeping gigabit relatively cheap is mass consumer and enterprise adoption, and consumers no longer care about wired Ethernet, they just want wireless crap, so I don't think th evolume will ever be there on any new wired Ethernet standard again, to bring costs down as far as they are on gigabit ethernet.

It may wind up being slightly cheaper than 10G BaseT, but it is also going to be at most half the speed.

 

[mjz_5]

I know lots of people who prefer wired networks over wireless and who transfer large data. It's bullshit that we are still using gigabit

 

[Exavior]

Sure, that would be cheaper, but that article says nothing about NIC's and Switches being cheaper.

I would predict them being much more expensive than gigabit. The only thing keeping gigabit relatively cheap is mass consumer and enterprise adoption, and consumers no longer care about wired Ethernet, they just want wireless crap, so I don't think th evolume will ever be there on any new wired Ethernet standard again, to bring costs down as far as they are on gigabit ethernet.

It may wind up being slightly cheaper than 10G BaseT, but it is also going to be at most half the speed.

I would somewhat expect them to be in the middle. Although a lot of that has to do with deployment. As with everything else under the sun the more that gets deployed the faster price drops. This actually almost perfectly mirrors an issue on the fiber side. When it comes to most FTTH deployments this is done with technology called GPON. For this standard you have 2.5Gbps down / 1.25Gbps up. This then passes through a passive splitter that allows multiple 1Gbps connections to do type of time share of the light. In recent years this was replaced with a new standard of 10Gbps GPON. the issue there is that with all that they added you have fully tunable optics as not only can you do the old sharing method of connection but also give a few 10Gbps point to point connections, all at different wavelengths. Which also means that the cost is very expensive and not widely deployed. Kind of like Cat7 and 10Gbps copper. So recently some new standards were introduced that will be much cheaper. If I recall my numbers correctly, the original 10Gbps GPON is something like 8x more expensive to deploy where the new standard (which removed some features to get backed to fixed optics) gets you at around 2-3x the cost. As more people start to make use of this cheaper standard they expect the cost to drop down to more around 1.5x - 2x the cost. So I could somewhat see the same thing happen here. these new copper standards might start off higher, but since more people can make use of them the cost will drop fast. Just like 1Gbps today. When I went to deploy that years ago at work that wasn't going to be cheap to upgrade all my switches and nics. But now the cost has came way down. The same will happen here, even if the cost is 85% of 10Gbps equipment you will see people actually be able to use it as many can't rewire their locations now. Honestly, I have been in many places that I dread seeing what happens if their cable ever stops working as they will have to destroy walls and ceilings through 5 rooms to get it replaced.

As for wireless vs wired. I think it is a fair trade off right now. Some might be fine with all wireless and others are going to be begging for faster wired. Especially if they need to worry about somewhat secure connections. But yes that is a fight that is never ending the battle of the wifi workforce.

 

[Exavior]

I know lots of people who prefer wired networks over wireless and who transfer large data. It's bullshit that we are still using gigabit

You have been able to go faster for years, just requires new wire. Think Cat6a supports 10Gbps, Cat7 supports up to 40Gbps or something like that (at about 30 meters). The real issue has been being able to get the faster speeds over existing wire. Its the same issue that you have with xDSL, they keep coming up with ways to get faster service to the house but it requires much shorter and shorter loops. Current top standard being G.Fast which is 1Gbps xDSL service at the limit of 100 meters. So basically get fiber to the closet of an apartment building and you can get 1Gbps over the existing phone lines then. However it completely kills the ability do pass dial tone over the lines with how they are transmitting that type of speed. It is amazing but the twist in a wire really do greatly impact possible speeds, as does the size of the wire. So after awhile you are fighting the cable not being able to support faster which much work. Which is what they did here, they sat down and figured out how to get that little extra boost. Which 1Gbps was already putting some voltage on the line to help with this push, I wonder what they had to push it to in order to get these types of speeds.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

You have been able to go faster for years, just requires new wire. Think Cat6a supports 10Gbps, Cat7 supports up to 40Gbps or something like that (at about 30 meters). The real issue has been being able to get the faster speeds over existing wire. Its the same issue that you have with xDSL, they keep coming up with ways to get faster service to the house but it requires much shorter and shorter loops. Current top standard being G.Fast which is 1Gbps xDSL service at the limit of 100 meters. So basically get fiber to the closet of an apartment building and you can get 1Gbps over the existing phone lines then. However it completely kills the ability do pass dial tone over the lines with how they are transmitting that type of speed. It is amazing but the twist in a wire really do greatly impact possible speeds, as does the size of the wire. So after awhile you are fighting the cable not being able to support faster which much work. Which is what they did here, they sat down and figured out how to get that little extra boost. Which 1Gbps was already putting some voltage on the line to help with this push, I wonder what they had to push it to in order to get these types of speeds.

It has been possible, yes.


It has (and still very much does) require quite the budget though.

As has been mentioned in this thread, 10Gig copper NIC's and Switches are VERY expensive.

You can - if you shop around used on ebay - occasionally find some decently affordable 10Gig fiber adapters, but in my experience they are of questionable quality.

I went with two Brocade BR1020's a while back for a direct line between my desktop and my NAS server in my basement. They worked, sometimes, but generally had constant driver issues, and after a while one just died on me.

I'm back to dual gigabit copper lines to my basement in LACP mode.

In the past, the newer faster standard has come down in price to where it is affordable, MUCH faster than with 10gig. The only reason I can think of why this is, is because mass production brings low cost, and typical consumers have mostly abandoned wired Ethernet in favor of a single cheap all in one wifi router. Without consumer demand for a faster network standard, there is no volume production, and without volume production, the costs stay high.

We need to get to the point where a good high end single port 10 gig copper Intel NIC costs about $30, and a decent managed 24port 10gig copper L2 switch costs about $300.

Until that happens, the ability to go faster is pretty much moot. It's too expensive.

The only thing i see that can change this is if more high end motherboards start integrating on board 10gig intel copper ethernet chipsets. That might finally start driving demand enough that we get volume sales and lower cost.

 

[Palladium@SG]

From what I understand 10GbE copper is nowhere near mainstream on consumer because:
-IEEE insistence on 10GBps instead of compromising on a slower intermediate speed standard
-The ASICs weren't as easy to develop as the industry thought it would
-Businesses who need lotsa bandwidth would rather just deploy fiber
-Consumers cared a lot more about Wi-Fi then wired