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> Ethernet is only GigE Erm... "only"?! I've never seen anything faster than 1GB ethernet in a laptop before, or even in a consumer desktop/tower. Am I missin

> Ethernet is only GigE Erm... "only"?! I've never seen anything faster than 1GB ethernet in a laptop before, or even in a consumer desktop/tower. Am I missing something?

hexo 5y ago
There are 2.5/5GbE network adapters already present on higher-end mobos for quite some time. Some are even 10GbE.
- GordonS 5y ago
  You ever seen one of these in a laptop? (genuinely curious)
  - Youden 5y ago
    2.5GbE is relatively common in gaming laptops: https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=31_LAN25g https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=31_LAN25g I own a GPD Pocket 3 which has it: https://gpd.hk/gpdpocket3 https://gpd.hk/gpdpocket3 And 10GbE is basically limited to the MSI Katana: https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=31_LAN10g https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=31_LAN10g
paulmd 5y ago
There has been a sea change on this in the last year or so. 2.5gbe is really starting to hit the market in a big way, multi-gig has gone from "why would you need that" to "in systems by default", and it did it all of a sudden. I did a mITX build on a B550 board last summer (so, not the super premium high-end boards) and all of the options I was looking at had 2.5gbe ethernet. Going forward, both AMD and Intel have built 2.5 gbe controllers into their cpus and chipsets, so if partners want to use it, it's there. As such you will see it start to be rolled out even in consumer products over the next couple years. The initial rollout was hampered by a few "light errata" with intel's controller implementation (basically it didn't work at 2.5 gbit speeds at all, oops) but we're a couple gens into it now and it's going forward. AMD has one on their chips as well (if not faster, I want to say AMD has 10gbe in their dies for Ryzen Embedded usage). (expecting it in a 2020-era product, however, is perhaps not reasonable, like I said this is something that has changed mostly in the last year or so. Although granted a Thinkpad is not a consumer product so maybe it should have been ahead of the curve. But I don't think multigig had penetrated even professional spaces that well in 2020, except perhaps 10gbe in certain high-end segments.) The gotcha with multi-gig has always been switches, very few cheap switches existed and the ones that did were mostly SFP+ and not 10GBase-T (i.e. you either need new wiring anyway, or you pay $50 a set for SFP+ adapters). This is somewhat better with 2.5gbe, there are now some 8-port switches under $200, but it's still a long way from 1gbe where you can get a nice 8-port for like $25. Hopefully it is a matter of volume and prices come down over time. I'm a little miffed that 10gbe got passed over - 2.5gbe seems like a half-measure, and the wiring argument isn't very compelling to me. If they implemented 10gbe you could always allow fallback to 2.5gbe if that's what the signal quality can support (many <10 meter Cat5e runs are good enough for full 10gbe anyway) and it's a much more significant step than 1->2.5gbit. And the economy of scale here is significant, if consumer stuff goes 2.5 then that's what gets made and 10gbit remains expensive. Anyway currently I am eyeballing the Netgear MS510TXM - this does pretty much what I want in terms of giving me a few SFP ports for fiber links (or server usage - SFP does have lower latency), a few 10gbase-T links for consumer PCs with Aquantia 10gbit nics, and a few 2.5 gbit ports for consumer junk. At $500 it would be nice if it was a 12-port, but it checks most of the boxes at least.
- GordonS 5y ago
  I had know idea it was finally starting to appear on the scene - with even some WiFi adapters pushing past 1Gb, it's about time! Still, as much as I'd like it myself, I can't imagine there is any push at all from consumers, and very little from prosumers. I guess it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing.
  - paulmd 5y ago
    Yeah, to put it another way, consumers aren't going to notice the difference, and prosumers probably would rather have had 10gbe. 2.5gbe is an awkward compromise imo, where the only real argument for it is strict observance of the cat5e rating over very long runs (that aren't super likely in consumer usage anyway, and could be accommodated by 5gb/2.5gb fallback speeds). It's not every day you need multi-gig, but it is very nice when you do end up doing something big that hammers your network hard. You do need to be serving from a SSD or a NAS, neither of which are particularly unusual anymore, but I guess for most consumers they don't really work with "their media" at all anymore, everything has transitioned to the cloud for average consumer. Everything is streamed, and if you want to back up a steam game or something, you just delete it and re-download it if you want it later. Bet that kinda sucks for people in Canada or australia on super limited data caps though, it's kind of a weird US- and euro-centric perspective. As a prosumer, it's a bit of a mentality change, but for things like photo or video editing, you don't need to have tons and tons of fast storage on your local machine, you can push it off to to your NAS and just manage it like the rest of your data, which is a huge convenience thing (in terms of backups, and in terms of capacity). 4-drive or 8-drive NAS can push a ton of data even if random isn't quite as fast as a SSD (and that's why files get cached in RAM anyway).
    - aceofspades19 5y ago
      > Bet that kinda sucks for people in Canada or australia on super limited data caps though, it's kind of a weird US- and euro-centric perspective. What?!? I live in Canada and have not had a data cap in over 10 years. They might exist for some ISPs but they are generally high enough that I've never heard anyone complain or get charged.
simcop2387 5y ago
These days 2.5GbE is becoming much more common, as is 5G and 10G to a lesser extent. A bigger driver of it is actually Wifi 6 and newer that actually need better than 1G to be able to give full theoretical speed over wifi.

> Ethernet is only GigE Erm... "only"?! I've never seen anything faster than 1GB ethernet in a laptop before, or even in a consumer desktop/tower. Am I missing something?

hexo 5y ago

There are 2.5/5GbE network adapters already present on higher-end mobos for quite some time. Some are even 10GbE.

GordonS 5y ago
You ever seen one of these in a laptop? (genuinely curious)
- Youden 5y ago
  2.5GbE is relatively common in gaming laptops: https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=31_LAN25g https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=31_LAN25g I own a GPD Pocket 3 which has it: https://gpd.hk/gpdpocket3 https://gpd.hk/gpdpocket3 And 10GbE is basically limited to the MSI Katana: https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=31_LAN10g https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=31_LAN10g

paulmd 5y ago

There has been a sea change on this in the last year or so. 2.5gbe is really starting to hit the market in a big way, multi-gig has gone from "why would you need that" to "in systems by default", and it did it all of a sudden. I did a mITX build on a B550 board last summer (so, not the super premium high-end boards) and all of the options I was looking at had 2.5gbe ethernet. Going forward, both AMD and Intel have built 2.5 gbe controllers into their cpus and chipsets, so if partners want to use it, it's there. As such you will see it start to be rolled out even in consumer products over the next couple years. The initial rollout was hampered by a few "light errata" with intel's controller implementation (basically it didn't work at 2.5 gbit speeds at all, oops) but we're a couple gens into it now and it's going forward. AMD has one on their chips as well (if not faster, I want to say AMD has 10gbe in their dies for Ryzen Embedded usage). (expecting it in a 2020-era product, however, is perhaps not reasonable, like I said this is something that has changed mostly in the last year or so. Although granted a Thinkpad is not a consumer product so maybe it should have been ahead of the curve. But I don't think multigig had penetrated even professional spaces that well in 2020, except perhaps 10gbe in certain high-end segments.) The gotcha with multi-gig has always been switches, very few cheap switches existed and the ones that did were mostly SFP+ and not 10GBase-T (i.e. you either need new wiring anyway, or you pay $50 a set for SFP+ adapters). This is somewhat better with 2.5gbe, there are now some 8-port switches under $200, but it's still a long way from 1gbe where you can get a nice 8-port for like $25. Hopefully it is a matter of volume and prices come down over time. I'm a little miffed that 10gbe got passed over - 2.5gbe seems like a half-measure, and the wiring argument isn't very compelling to me. If they implemented 10gbe you could always allow fallback to 2.5gbe if that's what the signal quality can support (many <10 meter Cat5e runs are good enough for full 10gbe anyway) and it's a much more significant step than 1->2.5gbit. And the economy of scale here is significant, if consumer stuff goes 2.5 then that's what gets made and 10gbit remains expensive. Anyway currently I am eyeballing the Netgear MS510TXM - this does pretty much what I want in terms of giving me a few SFP ports for fiber links (or server usage - SFP does have lower latency), a few 10gbase-T links for consumer PCs with Aquantia 10gbit nics, and a few 2.5 gbit ports for consumer junk. At $500 it would be nice if it was a 12-port, but it checks most of the boxes at least.

GordonS 5y ago
I had know idea it was finally starting to appear on the scene - with even some WiFi adapters pushing past 1Gb, it's about time! Still, as much as I'd like it myself, I can't imagine there is any push at all from consumers, and very little from prosumers. I guess it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing.
- paulmd 5y ago
  Yeah, to put it another way, consumers aren't going to notice the difference, and prosumers probably would rather have had 10gbe. 2.5gbe is an awkward compromise imo, where the only real argument for it is strict observance of the cat5e rating over very long runs (that aren't super likely in consumer usage anyway, and could be accommodated by 5gb/2.5gb fallback speeds). It's not every day you need multi-gig, but it is very nice when you do end up doing something big that hammers your network hard. You do need to be serving from a SSD or a NAS, neither of which are particularly unusual anymore, but I guess for most consumers they don't really work with "their media" at all anymore, everything has transitioned to the cloud for average consumer. Everything is streamed, and if you want to back up a steam game or something, you just delete it and re-download it if you want it later. Bet that kinda sucks for people in Canada or australia on super limited data caps though, it's kind of a weird US- and euro-centric perspective. As a prosumer, it's a bit of a mentality change, but for things like photo or video editing, you don't need to have tons and tons of fast storage on your local machine, you can push it off to to your NAS and just manage it like the rest of your data, which is a huge convenience thing (in terms of backups, and in terms of capacity). 4-drive or 8-drive NAS can push a ton of data even if random isn't quite as fast as a SSD (and that's why files get cached in RAM anyway).
  - aceofspades19 5y ago
    > Bet that kinda sucks for people in Canada or australia on super limited data caps though, it's kind of a weird US- and euro-centric perspective. What?!? I live in Canada and have not had a data cap in over 10 years. They might exist for some ISPs but they are generally high enough that I've never heard anyone complain or get charged.

simcop2387 5y ago

These days 2.5GbE is becoming much more common, as is 5G and 10G to a lesser extent. A bigger driver of it is actually Wifi 6 and newer that actually need better than 1G to be able to give full theoretical speed over wifi.