Haven't read the whole paper yet, but below 600 Mbit/s is implied as being "Slow Internet" in the intro.
Haven't read the whole paper yet, but below 600 Mbit/s is implied as being "Slow Internet" in the intro.
Meanwhile, low-end computers ship with a dozen 10+Gbit class transceivers on USB, HDMI, Displayport, pretty much any external port except for ethernet, and twice that many on the PCIe backbone. But 10Gbit ethernet is still priced like it's made from unicorn blood.
My understanding is right around 10Gbps you start to hit limitations with the shielding/type of cable and power needed to transmit/send over Ethernet.
When I was looking to upgrade at home, I had to get expensive PoE+ injectors and splitters to power the switch in the closet (where there's no outlet) and 10Gbps SFP+ transceivers are like $10 for fiber or $40 for Ethernet. The Ethernet transceivers hit like 40-50C
In a perfect world we would start using fiber in consumer products that need to move that much bandwidth, but I think the standards bodies don't trust consumers with bend radiuses and dust management so instead we keep inventing new ways to torture copper wires.
But bear in mind, standards like USB4 only support very short cables. It's impressive that USB4 can offer 40 Gbps - but it can only do so on 1m cables. On the other hand, 10 gigabit ethernet claims to go 100m on CAT6A.
Mine were over 90C, resulting in thermal shutdowns. I had to add an improvised heat exchanger to lower it down to ~70C: https://pics.archie.alex.net/share/U0G1yiWzShqOGXulwe1AetDjR...
You really can’t think of any major difference between 10G Ethernet and all of those other standards that might be responsible for the price difference?
Look at the supported lengths and cables. 10G Ethernet over copper can go an order of magnitude farther over relatively generic cables. Your USB-C or HDMI connections cannot go nearly as far and require significantly more tightly controlled cables and shielding.
That’s the difference. It’s not easy to accomplish what they did with 10G Ethernet over copper. They used a long list of tricks to squeeze every possible dB of SNR out of those cables. You pay for it with extremely complex transceivers that require significant die area and a laundry list of complex algorithms.
But switches haven't really kept up. A simple unmanaged 5-port or 8-port 2.5GigE isn't too bad, but anything beyond that gets tricky. 5GigE switches don't seem to exist, and you're already paying $500 for a budget-brand 10GigE switch with basic VLAN support. You want PoE? Forget it.
The irony is that at 10Gbps fiber suddenly becomes quite attractive. A brand-new SFP+ NIC can be found for $30, with DACs only $5 (per side) and transceivers $30 or so. You can get an actually-decent switch from Mikrotik for less than $300.
Heck, you can even get brand-new dualport SFP28 NICs for $100, or as little as $25 on Ebay! Switch-wise you can get 16 ports of 25Gbps out of a $800 Mikrotik switch: not exactly cheap, but definitely within range for a very enthusiastic homelabber.
The only issue is that wiring your home for fiber is stupidly expensive, and you can't exactly use it to power access points either.
No matter, eventually USB4NET will work out of the box. The USB-IF is a clown show and they have tripped over their shoelaces every step of the way, but consumer Ethernet hasn't moved in 20 years so this horse race still has a clear favorite, lol.
We are already doing this. USB-C is explicitly designed to allow for cables with active electronics, including conversion to & from fiber. You could just buy an optical USB-C cable off Amazon, if you wanted to.
What do you mean by that? My home isnt wired for ethernet. I can buy 30m of CAT6 cable for £7, or 30m of fibre for £17. For a home use, that's a decent amount of cable, and even spending £100 on cabling will likely run cables to even the biggest of houses.
For anything that wants 10Gbps lanes or less, copper is fine.
For ultra bandwidth, going fiber-only is a tempting idea.
If you decide you only need 50 meters, that reduces both power and cable requirements by a lot. Did we decide to ignore the easy solution in favor of stagnation?
Gigabit ethernet is ~100MB/s transfer speed over copper wire or ~30MB/s over wireless accounting for overhead and degradation. That is more than fast enough for most people.
10gbit is seemingly made from unicorn blood and 2.5gbit is seeing limited adoption because there simply isn't demand for them outside of enterprise who have lots of unicorn blood in their banks.
A rental service might help there, or a call-in service-- the 6 hours of drilling holes and pulling fibre can be done by yourself, and once it's all cut to rough length, bring out a guy who can fuse on 10 plugs in an hour for $150.
> Look at the supported lengths and cables. … relatively generic cables. Your USB-C or HDMI connections cannot go nearly as far and require significantly more tightly controlled cables and shielding. … They used a long list of tricks to squeeze every possible dB of SNR out of those cables.
My ordinary home-centre electric drill and an affordable ~7mm masonry bit lets me drill a hole in stucco large enough to accept bare cables with a very narrow gap to worry about.
Meanwhile a 10g port on my home router will run over copper for far longer. Not that I’m a fan given the power use, fibre is much easier to deal with and will run for miles.
That said;
> A rental service might help there, or a call-in service-- the 6 hours of drilling holes and pulling fibre can be done by yourself, and once it's all cut to rough length, bring out a guy who can fuse on 10 plugs in an hour for $150.
If you were paying someone to do it (rather than DIY) I'd wager the cost would be similar, as you're paying them for 6 hours of labour either way.
[0] https://www.cablemonkey.co.uk/fibre-optic-tool-kits-accessor...
If it's new construction or you already have everything ripped open it's less of an issue.
Instead we waited and waited before making slower versions of 10gig, and those are still very slow to roll out. Also 2.5gig and 5gig seem especially consumer-oriented, so for those users a cheap but half range 10gig would be all upside.
And 40gig can't reach 100m on any version of copper, so it's not like 100m is a sacred requirement.