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Commercial applications could use and afford the higher speed 10Gbit over 'fiber' and other expensive interconnects. While the consumer side really did not dema
by KingMachiavelli 6y ago
Commercial applications could use and afford the higher speed 10Gbit over 'fiber' and other expensive interconnects. While the consumer side really did not demand >1Gbit speeds until very recently but even now the demand is still very low.
10Gbit network adapters consumer a lot more power and are a lot more expensive than 1Gbit chipsets. Consumers's primary demands are things like better battery life, price, and smaller form factors so it makes sense to go with 1Gbit. Additionally, a lot of the most popular computers today don't even include a real Ethernet port; it's a folding mechanism which saves space but would make a 10Gbit spec Ethernet port (shielding, etc.) even more of a challenge.
Modern chipsets are starting to include 2.5/5Gbit chipsets which benefit from higher speeds but are still much cheaper than 10Gbit. I think a lot of players in this space were expecting and waiting for 10Gbit to become much cheaper and efficient but that did not happen.
Many Ultrabooks drop the Ethernet port altogether forcing the use of USB-C adapters. USB-C/thunderbolt has a theoretical bandwidth of 20/40Gbit/s which means you, in theory, could buy a 10Gbit ethernet to thunderbolt adapter.
I'm sure there's a lot more on the technical side that has kept the price/energy of 10Gbit high but I don't know the details.
- geerlingguy 6y ago> 10Gbit network adapters [...] are a lot more expensive than 1Gbit chipsets. You're not kidding! I'm working on updating a lot of my network to 10 GbE, and it's kind of insane how you can get by with super-cheap hardware, cabling, connectors, etc. for 1 Gbps and everything works fine... but when you go to 2.5 or 5 Gbps, prices increase a bit (and the need for better cables with more shielding arises). When you hit 10 Gbps, there's a lot more expense on every layer, especially the chips/cards that you connect to your computers. The difference is something like $5-10 for 1 Gbps devices, vs $150+ for 10 Gbps devices (in many cases... there are exceptions).
- moonbug 6y agograb connectx3s from eBay, they're 20-30 quid a pop.
- Cyder 6y agoPicked up a handful of old 10g mellanox cards and just direct connected my computers since even the used 10g switches are still expensive... i can reach double my 1g ethernet speeds but not near the 10g max. I'm thinking the pciv1 slots str holding them back...
- moonbug 6y agoNah, 4x gen1 is sufficient, and your cards are surely 8x or 16x. use iperf for a reliable measure.
- jacquesm 6y agoStop complaining. My first 100 mbit switch was $4500 for all of the five ports that it had.
- geerlingguy 6y agoI don't think of it as complaining—I remember 'back in the day' when a 20 MB hard drive was thousands too... that's tech. I was just commenting on the fact that there is often more-than-a-magnitude price difference between 1-10 Gbps.
- k_sze 6y agoThe switches and cards might be the "easy" part, those are solvable by throwing money at them.. The tough part is the Cat6a or higher cabling. If I understand correctly, properly terminating Cat6a to a spec-conforming level is hard, even professional cable puller don't always get it right. Besides all the tools and testers (which cost more money), you also need skill to ensure your cables are actually performing up to spec. And skill isn't something that you can necessarily buy with money.