10 ms·

I remember wiring up cat5 gigabit about 20 years ago in an industrial workplace. My house of that age also has cat5 everywhere and it’s aged very well. 1gig is

I remember wiring up cat5 gigabit about 20 years ago in an industrial workplace. My house of that age also has cat5 everywhere and it’s aged very well. 1gig is still the standard for wired with few but expensive 2.5g and very expensive 10g home and small business options.

AdamN 3y ago
Even now 1gbps is plenty for virtually every end user and I suspect it will be good enough for a long time (maybe VR changes things??).
- api 3y ago
  Neural compression is an emerging field and already shows some striking compression abilities, especially if the compressor/decompressor includes a large model which amounts to something like a huge pre-existing dictionary on both sides. Stable Diffusion XL is only about 8 gigabytes and can render a shocking array of different images from very short prompts with very high fidelity. 1gbps might be enough for more than we think.
  - dwighttk 3y ago
    Deterministicly?
    - api 3y ago
      Sure. The only reason image generators aren't deterministic is that you inject randomness. Set the same random seed, get the same image. Download Stable Diffusion XL and run it locally and try it. There are models that can be run in both directions. Take a source image and generate a token stream prompt for it. That's your compressed image. Now run it forward to decompress. CPU intensive but massive compression ratios can be achieved... like orders of magnitude better than jpeg. It's lossy compression, so we're not violating fundamental mathematical limits. Those bounds apply to lossless compression.
      - nerdbert 3y ago
        From my puttering, image->tokens->image yields something that may or not vaguely resemble the original, but is never anywhere near identical.
      - kibwen 3y ago
        Well, the value proposition of image formats are 1. transmission, which requires both sender and receiver to have the exact same model, which requires us to standardize on some model and ship it with everything until the end of time, and 2. archival, which would require storing the model alongside the file (which might more than counteract any data saved from improved compression) and would be highly fraught because, unlike existing decompression algorithms, it cannot be described in simple text (and therefore reimplemented at will), which risks making the file inaccessible and defeating the point of archival. It's a cool idea, especially for high-bandwidth, low-value contexts like streaming video calls, but I don't think it's going to wholesale replace ordinary lossy formats for images or prerecorded video delivery (and this is without considering the coding/decoding performance implications).
        petra 3y ago
        Most people using using streaming video don't require archival support. The source and the internet archive etc can manage the archival part.
- saintradon 3y ago
  My personal experience with VR is 1gbps is plenty, the issues with VR more boil down to things like latency (for instance, streaming a quest wirelessly with VR desktop basically requires Ethernet, with regular wifi the experience is just awful).
  - hnlmorg 3y ago
    Do you have WiFi 6? I found that to be adequate for me and my Quest needs.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Only so much data the human brain can pay attention too. And for big data you are running in data centres anyway while you are sending control data back and forth from home.
poisonborz 3y ago
It's not so gloomy, 2.5G ports are becoming standard on consumer desktop chipsets, and switches are not that expensive. For 10G, you can get copper cables easily, but SPFE is more common, I guess once chipsets get faster, do not consume as much/run as hot, copper might return there as well.
numlock86 3y ago
> 1gig is still the standard for wired A lot of people already get more than that from their ISP. I had at least 2.5g on every consumer product from the past 5 years. Small businesses use at least SFP on the floor level. Yada yada yada. Point is it's probably a regional thing.
- bitcharmer 3y ago
  Nah, you're in a very small minority. Most households have few hundred megs at most
  - p1esk 3y ago
    You’re probably in US. Meanwhile in Switzerland people are enjoying 25gbps internet: https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/ https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/
    - bitcharmer 3y ago
      I'm in the UK. What I stated applies to most countries. Switzerland is a niche.
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  You also need to have 2.5GB capable hardware in all of your home devices though.
  - sgjohnson 3y ago
    No, you don’t. You do need it only if you want to pull 2.5gigs on one device.
    - maccard 3y ago
      "One device" could be your router, and if your router can't do 2.5gb then nothing will be doing 2.5
- 3y ago
_yntr 3y ago
> very expensive 10g For me it's just 2€ more expensive than the standard 1g plan. It's really unfortunate to see how bad internet prices are, especially in the US and other countries with ISP monopolies. The only reason my internet is so relatively cheap is because early on there was a lot of competition in my country.
- foobarbecue 3y ago
  Can you say what country?
  - nerdbert 3y ago
    With Digi in Spain 10G is €5 more than 1G - https://www.digimobil.es/fibra-optica/ https://www.digimobil.es/fibra-optica/
    - klabb3 3y ago
      I just got on Digi 10G and I measure 8 Gbit/s symmetric, for… €25. Who can complain about that? Anyway, I hadn’t paid attention and yes turns out consumer hardware support is a bottleneck, not the actual ISP which is nuts. Seems like someone fell asleep at the wheel – I suspect people are gonna have a wake up once >1G becomes widespread – not even their new fancy motherboard will support it. It feels like for ages, it’s been the opposite - you buy hardware that is prepared for the future or at least the present. At least that’s how it’s been with SATA etc.. For instance, the cheapest NIC is like $75 and the router can only do 10G on one port. Wifi6 does not get near those speeds either and even so laptops have to be very new (even my M1 does not have full support for the 802.11ax thingy - partner’s M2 was at least able to pull ~1.6 Gbit/s). Switches and routers are premium priced. However, I was very impressed with the silent progression of cat cables, they’re just better and better ever iteration, backwards compatible and dirt cheap. Got a cat8 which is way, way more than I need for like €1/meter. And they’re flat and easy to pull long distances. Beautiful tech!
- Someone1234 3y ago
  That isn't what is expensive. If you get 10 GB, the question is, then what? I have bidirectional 1 GB plugged into a $200 EdgeSwitch, which then feeds Cat 6 throughout the home ($100/500 feet). This then filters down to $20-30 unmanaged 1 GB switches elsewhere. The whole thing is under $500. If I wanted to go up to 10 GB I don't just need to change to a $2K~ EdgeSwitch, I also need to run fiber/6E to be able to deliver more than 2.5 GB to any endpoint, then invest in expensive switching infrastructure elsewhere in the home to turn the incoming 10 GB signal into something more devices can accept (e.g. 1 GB or 2.5 GB). Safe estimate, is to go from 1 GB bidirectional to 10 GB bidirectional, it would be $5K in equipment and pulling new cable. For $100/month I can do 10 GB, but I won't because of the equipment cost/diminishing returns rather than the ISP cost difference. If network equipment comes a LONG way, and I can do it for under $1K, I'd consider it.
eddieroger 3y ago
I live in a house nearing 20 years old, and was incredibly pleased when I moved in and realized that all the phone jacks in this house were backed by CAT5, and if I was willing to invest the time (which I am), I could have at least one Ethernet jack in each room, and a pair channeled up to the attic as well. My only regret was they stripped way more than needed and didn't leave a lot of wire available, but enough that I could terminate and add a keystone jack that will last past my needs. Or so I thought until I learned that my ISP offers 2.5GBps to the house.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Implicit QoS - each device has a max 1GBps share of the 2.5GBps connection. Most hardware can't handle more anyways.
  - redundantly 3y ago
    > Implicit QoS Hahaha. Love it.
  - mmcnl 3y ago
    That's exactly how >1Gbit/s connections get sold. Hardware with multiple high-speed ports is very expensive, so typically you have 1 2.5G/10G port LAN port and all the other ports are 1G. So they say you can have multiple concurrent 1Gbit/s streams.
NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
Most cat5e structured cabling is completely fine for home-length runs at 2.5 or 10 gigabit/s - I am using existing cables for the 10G run from my fiber drop to my router, and for the 2.5G runs from my router to my wireless access points.
ivoc 3y ago
hah. Drilling holes to run Ethernet through centuries-old castle walls was my favorite.
xattt 3y ago
My home was redone at some point in the late 1990s and I also lucked out in this regard with Cat 5 used for telephony, but easily converted to proper Ethernet. I ended up purchasing a “lifetime” spool of Cat 6 to fill in some blanks, but it’s the optimal networking setup for me.

AdamN 3y ago

Even now 1gbps is plenty for virtually every end user and I suspect it will be good enough for a long time (maybe VR changes things??).

api 3y ago
Neural compression is an emerging field and already shows some striking compression abilities, especially if the compressor/decompressor includes a large model which amounts to something like a huge pre-existing dictionary on both sides. Stable Diffusion XL is only about 8 gigabytes and can render a shocking array of different images from very short prompts with very high fidelity. 1gbps might be enough for more than we think.
- dwighttk 3y ago
  Deterministicly?
  - api 3y ago
    Sure. The only reason image generators aren't deterministic is that you inject randomness. Set the same random seed, get the same image. Download Stable Diffusion XL and run it locally and try it. There are models that can be run in both directions. Take a source image and generate a token stream prompt for it. That's your compressed image. Now run it forward to decompress. CPU intensive but massive compression ratios can be achieved... like orders of magnitude better than jpeg. It's lossy compression, so we're not violating fundamental mathematical limits. Those bounds apply to lossless compression.
    - nerdbert 3y ago
      From my puttering, image->tokens->image yields something that may or not vaguely resemble the original, but is never anywhere near identical.
    - kibwen 3y ago
      Well, the value proposition of image formats are 1. transmission, which requires both sender and receiver to have the exact same model, which requires us to standardize on some model and ship it with everything until the end of time, and 2. archival, which would require storing the model alongside the file (which might more than counteract any data saved from improved compression) and would be highly fraught because, unlike existing decompression algorithms, it cannot be described in simple text (and therefore reimplemented at will), which risks making the file inaccessible and defeating the point of archival. It's a cool idea, especially for high-bandwidth, low-value contexts like streaming video calls, but I don't think it's going to wholesale replace ordinary lossy formats for images or prerecorded video delivery (and this is without considering the coding/decoding performance implications).
      - petra 3y ago
        Most people using using streaming video don't require archival support. The source and the internet archive etc can manage the archival part.
saintradon 3y ago
My personal experience with VR is 1gbps is plenty, the issues with VR more boil down to things like latency (for instance, streaming a quest wirelessly with VR desktop basically requires Ethernet, with regular wifi the experience is just awful).
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  Do you have WiFi 6? I found that to be adequate for me and my Quest needs.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Only so much data the human brain can pay attention too. And for big data you are running in data centres anyway while you are sending control data back and forth from home.

poisonborz 3y ago

It's not so gloomy, 2.5G ports are becoming standard on consumer desktop chipsets, and switches are not that expensive. For 10G, you can get copper cables easily, but SPFE is more common, I guess once chipsets get faster, do not consume as much/run as hot, copper might return there as well.

numlock86 3y ago

> 1gig is still the standard for wired A lot of people already get more than that from their ISP. I had at least 2.5g on every consumer product from the past 5 years. Small businesses use at least SFP on the floor level. Yada yada yada. Point is it's probably a regional thing.

bitcharmer 3y ago
Nah, you're in a very small minority. Most households have few hundred megs at most
- p1esk 3y ago
  You’re probably in US. Meanwhile in Switzerland people are enjoying 25gbps internet: https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/ https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/
  - bitcharmer 3y ago
    I'm in the UK. What I stated applies to most countries. Switzerland is a niche.
Almondsetat 3y ago
You also need to have 2.5GB capable hardware in all of your home devices though.
- sgjohnson 3y ago
  No, you don’t. You do need it only if you want to pull 2.5gigs on one device.
  - maccard 3y ago
    "One device" could be your router, and if your router can't do 2.5gb then nothing will be doing 2.5
3y ago

_yntr 3y ago

> very expensive 10g For me it's just 2€ more expensive than the standard 1g plan. It's really unfortunate to see how bad internet prices are, especially in the US and other countries with ISP monopolies. The only reason my internet is so relatively cheap is because early on there was a lot of competition in my country.

foobarbecue 3y ago
Can you say what country?
- nerdbert 3y ago
  With Digi in Spain 10G is €5 more than 1G - https://www.digimobil.es/fibra-optica/ https://www.digimobil.es/fibra-optica/
  - klabb3 3y ago
    I just got on Digi 10G and I measure 8 Gbit/s symmetric, for… €25. Who can complain about that? Anyway, I hadn’t paid attention and yes turns out consumer hardware support is a bottleneck, not the actual ISP which is nuts. Seems like someone fell asleep at the wheel – I suspect people are gonna have a wake up once >1G becomes widespread – not even their new fancy motherboard will support it. It feels like for ages, it’s been the opposite - you buy hardware that is prepared for the future or at least the present. At least that’s how it’s been with SATA etc.. For instance, the cheapest NIC is like $75 and the router can only do 10G on one port. Wifi6 does not get near those speeds either and even so laptops have to be very new (even my M1 does not have full support for the 802.11ax thingy - partner’s M2 was at least able to pull ~1.6 Gbit/s). Switches and routers are premium priced. However, I was very impressed with the silent progression of cat cables, they’re just better and better ever iteration, backwards compatible and dirt cheap. Got a cat8 which is way, way more than I need for like €1/meter. And they’re flat and easy to pull long distances. Beautiful tech!
Someone1234 3y ago
That isn't what is expensive. If you get 10 GB, the question is, then what? I have bidirectional 1 GB plugged into a $200 EdgeSwitch, which then feeds Cat 6 throughout the home ($100/500 feet). This then filters down to $20-30 unmanaged 1 GB switches elsewhere. The whole thing is under $500. If I wanted to go up to 10 GB I don't just need to change to a $2K~ EdgeSwitch, I also need to run fiber/6E to be able to deliver more than 2.5 GB to any endpoint, then invest in expensive switching infrastructure elsewhere in the home to turn the incoming 10 GB signal into something more devices can accept (e.g. 1 GB or 2.5 GB). Safe estimate, is to go from 1 GB bidirectional to 10 GB bidirectional, it would be $5K in equipment and pulling new cable. For $100/month I can do 10 GB, but I won't because of the equipment cost/diminishing returns rather than the ISP cost difference. If network equipment comes a LONG way, and I can do it for under $1K, I'd consider it.

eddieroger 3y ago

I live in a house nearing 20 years old, and was incredibly pleased when I moved in and realized that all the phone jacks in this house were backed by CAT5, and if I was willing to invest the time (which I am), I could have at least one Ethernet jack in each room, and a pair channeled up to the attic as well. My only regret was they stripped way more than needed and didn't leave a lot of wire available, but enough that I could terminate and add a keystone jack that will last past my needs. Or so I thought until I learned that my ISP offers 2.5GBps to the house.

giantg2 3y ago
Implicit QoS - each device has a max 1GBps share of the 2.5GBps connection. Most hardware can't handle more anyways.
- redundantly 3y ago
  > Implicit QoS Hahaha. Love it.
- mmcnl 3y ago
  That's exactly how >1Gbit/s connections get sold. Hardware with multiple high-speed ports is very expensive, so typically you have 1 2.5G/10G port LAN port and all the other ports are 1G. So they say you can have multiple concurrent 1Gbit/s streams.

NovemberWhiskey 3y ago

Most cat5e structured cabling is completely fine for home-length runs at 2.5 or 10 gigabit/s - I am using existing cables for the 10G run from my fiber drop to my router, and for the 2.5G runs from my router to my wireless access points.

ivoc 3y ago

hah. Drilling holes to run Ethernet through centuries-old castle walls was my favorite.

xattt 3y ago

My home was redone at some point in the late 1990s and I also lucked out in this regard with Cat 5 used for telephony, but easily converted to proper Ethernet. I ended up purchasing a “lifetime” spool of Cat 6 to fill in some blanks, but it’s the optimal networking setup for me.