9 ms·

Sure, years ago. But today Ethernet is just as scammy as everyone else, we've been stuck at 1 Gbps on consumer grade hardware for more than 15 years. There are

Sure, years ago. But today Ethernet is just as scammy as everyone else, we've been stuck at 1 Gbps on consumer grade hardware for more than 15 years. There are claims (unverified ofc) about their executives boasting about their stupid margins. 1 Gb switch is like 10-20 euros meanwhile 2.5 Gbps is like over 100...

jacquesm 4y ago
I can't make heads or tails of your comment. What is scammy about Ethernet and what 'stupid margins' does Ethernet have? It's a networking standard, not a company.
- themoonisachees 4y ago
  2.5G or even 10G is not that much more expensive and companies making consumer electronics sell it as a considerable premium for what is essentially the same cost difference as making a 8gb vs 16 gb flash drive. Of course, regular internet users don't need more than 2.5G (and couldn't use it in most of the world due to ISP monopolies) so anything faster than gigabit is a target for segmentation.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    But that has nothing to do with Ethernet as such, which isn't a 'company making consumer electronics'.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    Rant aside, I think there is an argument to be made that 2.5gbps switches "should" be cheaper now that 2.5gbps NICs have become fairly commonplace in the mainstream market. Case in point, I have a few recent-purchase machines with 2.5gbps networking but no 2.5gbps switch to connect them to because I personally can't justify their cost yet. I suppose I could bond two 1gbps ports together, or something, but I like to think I have other yaks to shave right now.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      You can get some basic switches that do 2.5gb but it's like $100, a bit more for a brand you might recognize. https://www.amazon.com/5-Port-Multi-Gigabit-Unmanaged-Entertainment-Network/dp/B0995S28PQ/ https://www.amazon.com/5-Port-Multi-Gigabit-Unmanaged-Entert... Personally I went with Mikrotik's 10gb switch but that needed SPF port thingies (which was fine for me, as I was connecting one old enterprise switch via fiber, direct copperering two servers, and using cabled cat7 or whatever for the Mac). 2.5gb is silly in my opinion unless it's literally "free" - you're often better with old 10gb equipment.
      - toast0 4y ago
        > 2.5gb is silly in my opinion unless it's literally "free" - you're often better with old 10gb equipment. I think 2.5g is going to make it in the marketplace, because 2.5g switches are finally starting to come down in price, and 10g switches are roughly twice the price, and that might be for sfp+, so you'll likely need transceivers, unless you're close enough for DAC. (NIC prices are also pretty good now, as siblings noted. But if you go with used 10G, you can get good prices there too, I've got 4 dual 10G cards and paid between $25 and $35 shipped for each)
      - Dalewyn 4y ago
        Yeah, it's that cost that is the problem. If I'm paying over a hundred bucks for a switch I might as well go higher and consider 10gbps options. 2.5gbps hardware need to come down to at least the $30 to $40 dollar range if they want to make any sense. Otherwise, they'll stay as niche hardware specifically for diehard enthusiasts or specific professionals only.
        BenjiWiebe 4y ago
        The NICs can be had for $20 (pretty sure I saw a $11 one the other day but can't find it right now on mobile).
        Dalewyn 4y ago
  - gooroo 4y ago
    The market at work. There is just no real demand for anything beyond 1G. The HN crowd is not representative of what would be needed to drive the price tags down on 2.5G stuff.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      If you have a gigabit internet connection, then most of the value of 10G comes from data sharing within the intranet, which just never caught on outside of hobbyists. And a 1G switch can still handle a lot of that, You don’t even need 10G for LAN parties, and whether backups can go faster depends on the storage speed and whether you actually care. Background backups hide a lot of sins. I’m hoping a swing back to on-prem servers will justify higher throughput, but that still may not be the case. You need something big to get people to upgrade aging infrastructure. What would be enough to get people to pay for new cable runs? 20Gb? 40?
- lunfard000 4y ago
  You are may actually be right, sorry, my rant may have been misguided. "networking standard" doesnt make it free of royalties though, dont/didn't companies pay to use the Wifi protocol?
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    What does that have to do with Ethernet? See: https://www.iol.unh.edu/sites/default/files/knowledgebase/ethernet/ethernet_evolution.pdf https://www.iol.unh.edu/sites/default/files/knowledgebase/et... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet
fulafel 4y ago
It's a big loss that wired networking speeds have plateaued but I feel it's more about apps and people adapting to slow and choppy wireless networks that penalise apps leveraging quality connectivity, and stand as bottlenecks in home networks (eg you don't need 10G broadband the wifi will cap everything to slow speeds anyway). And mobile devices that had much smaller screens and memories than computers for a decade+ stalling the demand driven by moore's law.
wongarsu 4y ago
People buy ethernet for reliable connection and reliable latency (no package drops), and to get 1Gbps. Few consumers have need for more, since internet speeds also rarely exceed 1Gbps. Sure, anyone with a NAS might like more, but that's a tiny market. And tiny markets lack economy of scale, causing prices to be high.
RF_Savage 4y ago
2.5Gb is downshifted 10Gb with the same line coding, just with 1/4 the symbol rate. This means that it inherits all the complexities of 10GbE, while tolerating cheaper connectors and cables. 10GbE uses DSQ128 PAM-16 at 800Msym/s. 2.5G just does quarter-rate at 200Msym/s. 1000BaseT uses trellis coded PAM-5, a significantly less complex modulation. When one factors in the complexity of the line code and all equalisation and other processing in the analog frontend things get expensive. Copper 10Gb interfaces run very hot for a reason. It takes quite a bit of signal processing and tricks to push 10Gb over copper, at least for any significant distances.
- throw0101b 4y ago
  > tolerating cheaper connectors and cables I always find the graphic below handy for telling which Cat cable can handle which Gig speed: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair#Variants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair#Var...
  - toast0 4y ago
    It's not really about can handle, but more is specified to handle at maximum length in a dense conduit. At shorter lengths, and in single runs, it's always worth trying something beyond what the wiring jacket says. I've run gigE over a run with a small section of cat3 coupled to a longer cat5e run (repurposed 4-pair phone wire), and just recently setup a 10G segment on a medium length of cat5e. The only thing is while I think 2.5G/5G devices do test for wiring quality, the decimal speeds don't, auto-negotiation happens on the 1Mbps link pulses, unmanaged devices can easily negotiate to speeds that won't work, if your wiring is less than spec, you need to be able to influence negotiation on at least one side, in case it doesn't work out.
dale_glass 4y ago
You can have 10G with eg, Mikrotik at a reasonable price. One problem with it is that the copper tech is just power hungry. It may actually make sense to go with fiber, especially if you might want even more later (100G actually can be had at non-insane prices!) Another problem is that it's CPU intensive. It's actually not that hard to run into situations where quite modern hardware can't actually handle the load of dealing with 10G at full speed especially if you want routing, a firewall, or bridging. It turns out Linux bridge interfaces disable a good amount of the acceleration the hardware can provide and can enormously degrade performance, which makes virtualization with good performance a lot trickier.
- throw0101b 4y ago
  > Another problem is that it's CPU intensive. Are there 10GigE cards that do not do things like IP/TCP offloading at this point? Offloading dates back to (at least) 2005: * https://www.chelsio.com/independent-research-shows-10g-ethernet-with-tcp-offload-outperforms-infiniband-and-myrinet-1121720400/ https://www.chelsio.com/independent-research-shows-10g-ether... * https://www.networkworld.com/article/2312690/tcp-offload-lifts-10g-ethernet-over-other-technologies.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2312690/tcp-offload-lif...
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    You can go fast if you don't do anything fancy with the interface. If you say, want bridged networking for your VMs and add your 10G interface to virbr0, poof, a good chunk of your acceleration vanishes right there. Routing and firewalling also cost you a lot. There are ways to deal with this with eg, virtual functions, but the point is that even on modern hardware, 10G can be no longer a foolproof thing to have working at full capacity. You may need to actually do a fair amount of tweaking to have things perform well.
  - iptrans 4y ago
    TCP/IP offload isn’t the issue. The core problem is that the Linux kernel uses interrupts for handling packets. This limits Linux networking performance in terms of packets per second. The limit is about a million packets per second per core. For reference 10GE is about 16 million packets per second at line rate using small packets. This is why you have to use kernel bypass software in user space to get linerate performance above 10G in Linux. Popular software for this use case utilize DPDK, XDP or VPP.

jacquesm 4y ago

I can't make heads or tails of your comment. What is scammy about Ethernet and what 'stupid margins' does Ethernet have? It's a networking standard, not a company.

themoonisachees 4y ago
2.5G or even 10G is not that much more expensive and companies making consumer electronics sell it as a considerable premium for what is essentially the same cost difference as making a 8gb vs 16 gb flash drive. Of course, regular internet users don't need more than 2.5G (and couldn't use it in most of the world due to ISP monopolies) so anything faster than gigabit is a target for segmentation.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  But that has nothing to do with Ethernet as such, which isn't a 'company making consumer electronics'.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Rant aside, I think there is an argument to be made that 2.5gbps switches "should" be cheaper now that 2.5gbps NICs have become fairly commonplace in the mainstream market. Case in point, I have a few recent-purchase machines with 2.5gbps networking but no 2.5gbps switch to connect them to because I personally can't justify their cost yet. I suppose I could bond two 1gbps ports together, or something, but I like to think I have other yaks to shave right now.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    You can get some basic switches that do 2.5gb but it's like $100, a bit more for a brand you might recognize. https://www.amazon.com/5-Port-Multi-Gigabit-Unmanaged-Entertainment-Network/dp/B0995S28PQ/ https://www.amazon.com/5-Port-Multi-Gigabit-Unmanaged-Entert... Personally I went with Mikrotik's 10gb switch but that needed SPF port thingies (which was fine for me, as I was connecting one old enterprise switch via fiber, direct copperering two servers, and using cabled cat7 or whatever for the Mac). 2.5gb is silly in my opinion unless it's literally "free" - you're often better with old 10gb equipment.
    - toast0 4y ago
      > 2.5gb is silly in my opinion unless it's literally "free" - you're often better with old 10gb equipment. I think 2.5g is going to make it in the marketplace, because 2.5g switches are finally starting to come down in price, and 10g switches are roughly twice the price, and that might be for sfp+, so you'll likely need transceivers, unless you're close enough for DAC. (NIC prices are also pretty good now, as siblings noted. But if you go with used 10G, you can get good prices there too, I've got 4 dual 10G cards and paid between $25 and $35 shipped for each)
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      Yeah, it's that cost that is the problem. If I'm paying over a hundred bucks for a switch I might as well go higher and consider 10gbps options. 2.5gbps hardware need to come down to at least the $30 to $40 dollar range if they want to make any sense. Otherwise, they'll stay as niche hardware specifically for diehard enthusiasts or specific professionals only.
      - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
        The NICs can be had for $20 (pretty sure I saw a $11 one the other day but can't find it right now on mobile).
        Dalewyn 4y ago
- gooroo 4y ago
  The market at work. There is just no real demand for anything beyond 1G. The HN crowd is not representative of what would be needed to drive the price tags down on 2.5G stuff.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    If you have a gigabit internet connection, then most of the value of 10G comes from data sharing within the intranet, which just never caught on outside of hobbyists. And a 1G switch can still handle a lot of that, You don’t even need 10G for LAN parties, and whether backups can go faster depends on the storage speed and whether you actually care. Background backups hide a lot of sins. I’m hoping a swing back to on-prem servers will justify higher throughput, but that still may not be the case. You need something big to get people to upgrade aging infrastructure. What would be enough to get people to pay for new cable runs? 20Gb? 40?
lunfard000 4y ago
You are may actually be right, sorry, my rant may have been misguided. "networking standard" doesnt make it free of royalties though, dont/didn't companies pay to use the Wifi protocol?
- jacquesm 4y ago
  What does that have to do with Ethernet? See: https://www.iol.unh.edu/sites/default/files/knowledgebase/ethernet/ethernet_evolution.pdf https://www.iol.unh.edu/sites/default/files/knowledgebase/et... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet

fulafel 4y ago

It's a big loss that wired networking speeds have plateaued but I feel it's more about apps and people adapting to slow and choppy wireless networks that penalise apps leveraging quality connectivity, and stand as bottlenecks in home networks (eg you don't need 10G broadband the wifi will cap everything to slow speeds anyway). And mobile devices that had much smaller screens and memories than computers for a decade+ stalling the demand driven by moore's law.

wongarsu 4y ago

People buy ethernet for reliable connection and reliable latency (no package drops), and to get 1Gbps. Few consumers have need for more, since internet speeds also rarely exceed 1Gbps. Sure, anyone with a NAS might like more, but that's a tiny market. And tiny markets lack economy of scale, causing prices to be high.

RF_Savage 4y ago

2.5Gb is downshifted 10Gb with the same line coding, just with 1/4 the symbol rate. This means that it inherits all the complexities of 10GbE, while tolerating cheaper connectors and cables. 10GbE uses DSQ128 PAM-16 at 800Msym/s. 2.5G just does quarter-rate at 200Msym/s. 1000BaseT uses trellis coded PAM-5, a significantly less complex modulation. When one factors in the complexity of the line code and all equalisation and other processing in the analog frontend things get expensive. Copper 10Gb interfaces run very hot for a reason. It takes quite a bit of signal processing and tricks to push 10Gb over copper, at least for any significant distances.

throw0101b 4y ago
> tolerating cheaper connectors and cables I always find the graphic below handy for telling which Cat cable can handle which Gig speed: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair#Variants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair#Var...
- toast0 4y ago
  It's not really about can handle, but more is specified to handle at maximum length in a dense conduit. At shorter lengths, and in single runs, it's always worth trying something beyond what the wiring jacket says. I've run gigE over a run with a small section of cat3 coupled to a longer cat5e run (repurposed 4-pair phone wire), and just recently setup a 10G segment on a medium length of cat5e. The only thing is while I think 2.5G/5G devices do test for wiring quality, the decimal speeds don't, auto-negotiation happens on the 1Mbps link pulses, unmanaged devices can easily negotiate to speeds that won't work, if your wiring is less than spec, you need to be able to influence negotiation on at least one side, in case it doesn't work out.

dale_glass 4y ago

You can have 10G with eg, Mikrotik at a reasonable price. One problem with it is that the copper tech is just power hungry. It may actually make sense to go with fiber, especially if you might want even more later (100G actually can be had at non-insane prices!) Another problem is that it's CPU intensive. It's actually not that hard to run into situations where quite modern hardware can't actually handle the load of dealing with 10G at full speed especially if you want routing, a firewall, or bridging. It turns out Linux bridge interfaces disable a good amount of the acceleration the hardware can provide and can enormously degrade performance, which makes virtualization with good performance a lot trickier.

throw0101b 4y ago
> Another problem is that it's CPU intensive. Are there 10GigE cards that do not do things like IP/TCP offloading at this point? Offloading dates back to (at least) 2005: * https://www.chelsio.com/independent-research-shows-10g-ethernet-with-tcp-offload-outperforms-infiniband-and-myrinet-1121720400/ https://www.chelsio.com/independent-research-shows-10g-ether... * https://www.networkworld.com/article/2312690/tcp-offload-lifts-10g-ethernet-over-other-technologies.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2312690/tcp-offload-lif...
- dale_glass 4y ago
  You can go fast if you don't do anything fancy with the interface. If you say, want bridged networking for your VMs and add your 10G interface to virbr0, poof, a good chunk of your acceleration vanishes right there. Routing and firewalling also cost you a lot. There are ways to deal with this with eg, virtual functions, but the point is that even on modern hardware, 10G can be no longer a foolproof thing to have working at full capacity. You may need to actually do a fair amount of tweaking to have things perform well.
- iptrans 4y ago
  TCP/IP offload isn’t the issue. The core problem is that the Linux kernel uses interrupts for handling packets. This limits Linux networking performance in terms of packets per second. The limit is about a million packets per second per core. For reference 10GE is about 16 million packets per second at line rate using small packets. This is why you have to use kernel bypass software in user space to get linerate performance above 10G in Linux. Popular software for this use case utilize DPDK, XDP or VPP.