The PARC facility also is known for the invention of Ethernet, a networking technology that allows high-speed data transmission over coaxial cables. Ethernet has become the standard wired local area network around the world, and it is widely used in businesses and homes. It was honored this year as an IEEE Milestone, a half century after it was born.
Truly one of the success stories of the technology world. Sure, those first Ethernet cables and accessories have changed a lot over the decades, but we’re still using it to this day, and we’ll be using it for many more decades to come.
Ethernet is at the happy place, where it is much better than the things it replaced, and also irreplaceable so far by the newer technologies either.
Currently, though, it started getting limited. 10Gbe never took off outside of datacenters and limited enthusiast use cases. There are some consumer devices of course with 2.5GBE, 5GBE, or even 10GBE, but setting them reliably is a challenge, compared to gigabit Ethernet, which just does not care about cable quality or length, at least not much. Nor about the specific devices on each end.
If I can, I would be wiring my home with fiber, but that has even more complexity, and an importnat pre-planning stage. And to be honest, I am no longer young enough to spend the time.
sukru,
Yeah consumer devices haven’t kept up pace. most manufacturers stuck with 1GBE for decades. Many prosumers wanted 10GBE but kept on waiting for prices to become more bearable. I wanted a faster network so I eventually pulled the trigger, but it wasn’t cheap. Seeing more than 2.5GBE is unusual even today.
I’m not sure what you meant with “setting them reliably is a challenge”? I only ever use CAT6 cable and it hits the expected speeds without issue even across the house. Do be aware that some of the cat6 cables I’ve bought from amazon vendors were NOT to spec. They’re listed and printed as CAT6, but were clearly cat 5/cat5e when they arrived. These will likely still work at lower lengths, but use CAT6 to do it right. The brand name cables are so cheap though that I see no reason not to buy from a more reputable source. I doubt many consumers would need it in a residential situation, but CAT6a and CAT7 are available too for 100m runs and even higher speeds, although fiber could make more sense,
community.fs.com/article/should-we-use-cat6-or-cat6a-for-10gbase-t.html
Are you talking about SFP+? If so I’ve read that some vendors like to block each other’s transceivers so they won’t talk to each other, which is a real shame and IMHO this should be prohibited by the standard but it is what it is.
https://community.cisco.com/t5/server-networking/3rd-party-sfp-on-nexus-7010/td-p/1537260
This doesn’t exist with ethernet, you can reasonably expect all ethernet adapters to talk to each other assuming they implement the same speeds.
I’ve learned from experience that the biggest con for 10GBE ethernet (besides maybe price) is how much power it needs. It gets hot. This is exacerbated by the fact that intel drivers that don’t support the 802.3az energy efficient ethernet standard. This is bad for 1GBE, but it’s atrocious at 10GBE. It means transceivers run full throttle 24×7 and can never power down even when nobody’s on the network.
I paid a very hefty premium to buy intel NICs because I expected better support from them. EEE was listed on the official specs for their 10GBE products. When the products were new, intel promised to deliver a feature update later, ok whatever. But year after year intel stated it wasn’t ready. Around 8 years of postponement later, at EOL, they said EEE wasn’t going to be supported despite the fact that it’s listed in the product specs That’s a dick move intel!
“On the state of 802.3az with Intel X550”
https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/On-the-state-of-802-3az-with-Intel-X550/m-p/1364016
“Intel X550-T2 where is firmware update for promised 802.3bz (official NBase-T standard)?”
https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/Intel-X550-T2-where-is-firmware-update-for-promised-802-3bz/m-p/1429739
In hindsight I am extremely disappointed with intel’s support and regret choosing them, My network would support EEE had I gone with cheaper NICs from lessor known brands. People might ask if this is a big deal, after all the network works fine without EEE. It matters because without EEE support on both sides, neither side can enter idle standby. This means all my network switches use full power even when idle. Incidentally this prompted me to mount more substantial heatsinks to them…
https://i.postimg.cc/Jnx0Gh79/heatsink.jpg
Alfman,
For (up to) gigabit Ethernet, I could just buy any random cable from the Internet, plus a (relatively) cheap network switch, and things would work for years. The only reason for change would be to expand the system.
With 10GBe, I ran into:
– The existing cable being unable to carry the signal
– My 10GBE Intel card not negotiating with the 5GBE connection.
– As you said massive power draw
– And reading lots of early failures in the switch reviews, including the one I bought.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1699564-REG/trendnet_teg_s762_6_port_10g_switch.html
Now trying to redo the system using SFP+ direct attach cables, and also SFP+ to Ethernet (multi-gig) adapters
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C7BL2TRT
and a new switch
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DJWZ6V
If this fails, too, I’ll try fiber. (I have heard good things about the site you shared: fs.com)
sukru,
I understand, When I ran cables ten years ago, I went with cat6 so I was already set for 10gbe even though I wouldn’t have the equipment for several more years.. I assume you have cat5 from an ancient install?
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s normal. To my knowledge ethernet NICs do not test link quality and negotiate down. Auto-negotiation chooses the highest speed so if you want anything else you may have to set it manually.
With EEE this is less concerning because idle links don’t need much power and the difference is huge! But since you have an intel card, it might not support EEE, just like the x550’s I have.
I wonder if it’s heat related? I’ve had a number of network devices die on me after their fans died, unbeknown to me. Both of my 10gbe switches are still working fine and they happen to be fanless, which is part of the reason I chose them. They do get warm but that’s why I added heat sinks to mine, haha.
https://www.newegg.com/netgear-gs110emx-100nas-8-x-gigabit-copper-ports-2-x-10-gig-multi-gig-copper-ports/p/2WG-002S-00064
My only wish is that they had more 10gbe ports or even 2.5gbe. 1gbps is still fine for most devices of course, but when you’re forced to use a 10gbps port for uplink, you only have room for one 10gbps device. I’ve found unmanaged switches with more 10gbe ports, but managed 10gbe switches are hard to come by at an affordable price.
I was on the fence with SFP+. Especially when I was researching it years ago a lot of people were experiencing problems between brands. I didn’t like the idea of investing in something and then potentially being vendor locked to an ecosystem. That said, it seems like a lot of the clones just lie about their ID to increase compatibility and I guess that’s the solution. But I like that ethernet doesn’t have a mechanism for brand discrimination.
SFP+ direct attach cables certainly seem like a good way to go in terms of cost/energy/performance. But I’d have to buy a lot of new nics and switches. One of the advantages of ethernet is that everything is so highly compatible!
BTW it looks like your switch link is broken.
Edit:
I may have misunderstood your point here
Is the issue that the NIC doesn’t autonegotiate down to a lower speed?
Or is the issue that the 10gbe NIC doesn’t support 5gbe at all?
Ironically 2.5/5gbe are newer than 10gbe, so there exist equipment that can do the faster 10gbe but not the newer & slower 2.5/5gbe. Apparently 14 years later, haha.
https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/feature/Understanding-the-evolution-of-Ethernet
Alfman
It goes down to 1GBE, skipping over 5. Makes sense though, at the time those fractional increments were not a thing back then.
Switch link (hopefully fixed):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DJWZ6VJ
It has 4 SFP+ ports. Two of them I will use the Ethernet converter. The other two will be direct attach (hopefully they are compatible with Mellanox for direct attach)
sukru,
Cool, let me know how it works 🙂
I have zero experience with this, but if anything turns out not to be compatible, I know some people have successfully reprogrammed the transceivers using programmers. It probably wouldn’t be worth having if your just setting up a tiny network, but if your hardware is giving you grief about the brand you’ve purchased, a programmer may be able to flash a new brand identity onto your transceivers.
https://wiki.sfptotal.com/index.php/SFPTotal_Plus
Again, I don’t know much about it but I figure I’d mention it.
I’m pretty happy with ethernet. It’s easy to use, easy to install, easy to upgrade piecemeal. More so than pretty much any other technology I can think of.
A gripe I have isn’t really with “ethernet” itself, but a byproduct of it’s original 1500byte packet size. This hasn’t aged well since packets this small are not enough for modern applications and the overhead is enormous. Technically this isn’t ethernet’s fault, “jumbo packets” have existed for decades now at the ethernet level. But 1500B remains the default nearly everywhere and support for jumbo packets out of the box is generally quite bad on wide area networks and even local networks. I find that MTU path discovery at the ipv4 and ipv6 layers is typically broken. I can’t blame ethernet for this since jumbo packets work great at the ethernet level, but it’s regrettable that other layers of the network stack remain stuck on ethernet’s original 1500B packet sizes all these decades later.
My biggest gripe with ethernet are those bloody connectors.
They would be the worst designed ones in the world if it weren’t for USB A.
smashIt,
Some of the connectors are worse than others, haha. Ethernet has the nice property of being able to create custom cables at home. Are there other connectors that fit the bill? For such an old connector, I find ethernet is remarkably robust compared to other connectors of the era. Compare it to DB9, DB15 and DB25 (serial/vba/parallel/etc). Those connectors could be pinned yourself, but it was laborious and the connection ended up with significant slop.
I agree on USB, there was a consortium that didn’t know how to design a good connector and it’s caused prolonged suffering for nearly all of us. To this day I’m still cursing the bloody microusb connectors, which I am forced to use on things like RPI zero. It’s the most fragile thing.
The HDMI connection is what I’d consider good from a quality standpoint. It’s a solid connection with no slop, asymmetric, robust. DP has the added benefit of a lock. These provide a lot more confidence.
Alas, the trend has been to put smaller connectors on everything. Take HDMI being replaced with mini HDMI…..honestly I’m not a fan of taking a good strong connection and making it worse. Puny connectors and heavy duty cables don’t mix. You inevitably need more adapters, that weaken the signal and multiply the forces leading to more stress, which is already the Achilles’ heel for small connectors.