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Lots of reasons: 1. Consumer broadband speeds rarely exceed 1Gbps 2. 1Gbps Local network transfers are seldom slowed by the network (as large file work typica
by buro9 5y ago
Lots of reasons:
1. Consumer broadband speeds rarely exceed 1Gbps
2. 1Gbps Local network transfers are seldom slowed by the network (as large file work typically involves HDD still)
3. Where local network transfers are impeded by the network speed the transferring itself isn't a frequent enough and blocking thing that people feel they need to fix it... they just go make a cup of tea once or twice a day
4. There are a lot of old network devices and cables out there, some built into the fabric of buildings (wall network sockets and cable runs)
5. WiFi is very very convenient, so much so that 250Mbps is good enough for almost anything and most people would rather be wireless at that speed than wired at a much higher speed (gamers and video professionals being an exception)
And ultimately, the cost and effort of investing in it doesn't produce an overwhelming benefit to people.
Even in quite large offices, it's hard to argue that this is worth it when the vast majority of people are just using web applications and very lossy audio and video meetings across the internet.
- AceJohnny2 5y agoAll excellent points but I'd remove gamers from there: > (gamers and video professionals being an exception) I play Stadia, 4K HDR 60FPS, just fine on a gigabit ethernet connection and 150MBit internet connection. Any games not streaming the entire video are fine with just kilobits/s of data, as long as the latency is good. So the case for home 10GE is even weaker ;)
- aequitas 5y agoYou probably even don't need gigabit. A Stadia stream ranges from 10Mbit to 50Mbit depending on the quality settings. Latency and other network users are far more influential on gameplay.
- xondono 5y agoI understood GPs point to be “everyone is pretty much on wifi except professionals and gamers anyway”.
- buro9 5y agoGamers aren't a strong answer :D but they're the audiophiles of home computing hardware and networks and the most likely to overspend in the belief that it's better :D
- kodah 5y agoGamers being hard wired has everything to do with consistent latency in twitch style FPS's. That said, consistent latency is pretty beneficial in most PVP games.
- Ourgon 5y agoHm, that's taking it a bit far given that I've yet to see any gamer who believes that e.g. taping plastic bags with gravel to their network cables [1] will lower their ping times (if it is not for weighing down a cruddy connector which only works when you press the damn thing down, that is). There does not seem to be a gamer-equivalent of $30000 speaker cables [2] (8 ft., add $1500 per additional ft.) or $10.000 power cables [3] either. No, audiophiles still hold the biscuit for being the most easily deluded moneyed demographic out there. If Hans Christian Andersen were alive today he'd write a story about it, "The Emperor's new Speaker Cable" [4] where a little boy is the only one who dares to comment on the piece of rusty barbed wire connecting the speakers to the amplifier. [1] https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm [2] https://www.synergisticresearch.com/cables/srx-cables/srx-sc/ https://www.synergisticresearch.com/cables/srx-cables/srx-sc... [3] https://www.synergisticresearch.com/cables/srx-cables/srx-ac/ https://www.synergisticresearch.com/cables/srx-cables/srx-ac... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes
- Tostino 5y agoI love how much more ridiculous this has gotten since I last looked at this space ~15 years ago.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoOh. Really? Why not compare the insane prices of thermal paste and compounds per volume/weight with the stuff that is used industrially? Not always, but often used for results which could be called statistic noise. Very diminishing returns. All for pushing reviews with many bar graphs over two dozen pages, and so much more page impressions. Like the rest of gamermedia, too. Woo!
- m_eiman 5y ago> as long as the latency is good. Which is what rules out wifi :)
- jcelerier 5y agoWeird, SteamLink on gigabit ethernet is barely useable here
- globular-toast 5y agoLooks like SteamLink only has a 100mbit/s NIC? People do often vastly overestimate how much bandwidth things need. The latest 4K HDR Blu-rays are easily streamable over 100mbit/s with a big enough buffer. A big buffer is no good for real-time gaming, of course, so they probably cap the peak bitrate to <100mbit/s which would be fine I imagine.
- jcelerier 5y agoIt's the steamlink app of a samsung tv which is from 2020, I doubt it's 100mbit
- globular-toast 5y agoYou might be surprised. There are still quite a few 100mbit/s NICs shipped in new things. It would save them a few pennies. Raspberry Pis only got gigabit NICs in 2018 and only usable at gigabit speeds in 2020. Pis are more capable than a lot of smart TVs I've seen.
- AceJohnny2 5y agoPerhaps more of an encoding performance issue on the host computer?
- ericd 5y agoSeems like they're saying that gamers would prefer wired to wifi, which I think is reasonable - it's not so much a bandwidth issue as a latency issue - wifi has higher latency, and higher variance than wired ethernet, especially if you get a crappy client joining and filling up the airtime with retry attempts. But maybe that's dominated by ISP variance for most.
- erik 5y agoAnother factor: data centres moved to fiber. And fiber is less physically robust and not great for desktop connections or plugging in to a laptop. 10GBASE-T exists, but it turns out pushing 10gbit/s over 100m of twisted pair requires chips that are hot and power hungry. Again, not great for desktops or laptops. And because it’s not used in data centres, there are no economies of scale or trickle down effects. Gigabit Ethernet and wifi being “good enough” combined with 10gig over twisted pair being expensive and power hungry means that the consumer space has been stuck for a long time.
- NavinF 5y ago> fiber is less physically robust Maybe this used to be the case long ago, but I don’t think it’s true today. Personally I’m pretty rough with fiber (having slammed cabinet doors on fiber, looped fiber around posts with a low bend radius, left the ends exposed to dust, etc) and had no issues within a data center. Can’t say the same for copper. Even the cheapest 10km optics have more margin when your link is only 50m. Oh and bend insensitive fiber is dirt cheap and works just fine when it’s tied into knots.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoYes, even in my days with FDDI (pre-2000) you could wrap them around your finger, no matter if multi- or single mode. At least for 'demo'-purposes, to stop the hyperventilation of some people. Nonetheless I've seen horrible installations, where I've straightened out the gordic knots when I've seen them, just to be sure ;-)
- aidenn0 5y agoThe robustness gap has narrowed (not just with better fiber; some cat-6 STP is surprisingly fragile compared to old cat 5), but I think copper is still more robust for short runs where there will be many insertions and removals.
- salamandersauce 5y ago2.5Gb ethernet seems to be starting to trickle out at least. It's becoming a more common thing on desktop motherboards. Doesn't seem like there is a lot of 2.5Gb routers yet though.
- thfuran 5y agoI think 1gbps is more limiting now in consumer space than 100 Mbps was back when gigabit started becoming widespread.