5 ms·

There are still far more people below gigabit speeds than there are people hitting their gig. As more fiber is deployed that may change, but it's still a very f

There are still far more people below gigabit speeds than there are people hitting their gig. As more fiber is deployed that may change, but it's still a very functional device regardless.

smcleod 3y ago
The cost of 2.5G chipsets is so low it really shouldn't matter especially for a 'premium' product like this.
- joshspankit 3y ago
  Exactly my thought. Why not just spend the little extra and do 2.5G ports. There is one potential hurdle though: they specifically mention that it can handle 1G of traffic even if you enable a bunch of features. They would have had to upgrade the processors to be able to make the same claim at 2.5
  - smcleod 3y ago
    That's with all the features on though right? I'm sure a lot of folks wouldn't be using VPN, deep packet inspection, ad blocking, a large number of routes and vlans, IDS, caching etc all at once, it hardly takes any CPU processing to simply route 2.5G (or hell, even 10G) through a firewall.
    - joshspankit 3y ago
      Solid points, but there’s a little bit of history (the details are fuzzy for me so apologies to anything I get wrong): When 1Gbps internet connections were starting to be widely available Unifi put out some “1Gbps” products that could only route 1Gbps with nothing turned on. It quickly dropped to 300Mbps if someone wanted to use any of the Unifi features and people called them out. If they are making it a point to address that in this current product I feel like they want to make sure that type of call out doesn’t happen again.
      - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        This is surprisingly common, SonicWall devices are kind of market segmented by how much they can process with security services enabled. We installed 50/50 fiber at a customer location and their SonicWall had a gig WAN, but with the device set to "Maximum Security" it only got about 30-35 meg download speed. "Performance Optimized" let it hit the 50/50 lmao
  - lukeholder 3y ago
    It’s called market segmentation. Their other machines do 2.5-10g but this isn’t those products.
- vel0city 3y ago
  This thing is listed at $150. That's not exactly a "premium" product. Linksys sells routers for more money than this.
- ksec 3y ago
  I dont think a $149 Mesh router is exactly in the premium segment. I guess they could always do a Tri-Band, WiFI 6E with 2 2.5xGbps Ethernet for $199. ( That would be awesome )
- poisonborz 3y ago
  It's not the cost of ports, but doing all the traffic processing for +500% of bandwith.
  - smcleod 3y ago
    2.5G is absolutely nothing for modern chipsets and processors.
    - poisonborz 3y ago
      And do they cost the same? I also wouldn't call it nothing, 2.5g switches have much higher consumption and get hotter, let alone 10g.
      - smcleod 3y ago
        I’ve got 2.5G switches at home and they easily run off 12V 0.8A power adapters (8 port 2.5G 1x 10g)
        manmal 3y ago
        I don’t know if you mean managed switches, but unmanaged switch processing is way less complex than routing.
        midasuni 3y ago
        Switching packets in hardware is trivial (assuming you have a chip). If you want to process them in software you need something more beefy.
moondev 3y ago
With that logic why does it even have a gigabit uplink, after all three are still people out there that are not "hitting their 100Mbit/s" yet?
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  If we're being arbitrary who cares if it has fast Ethernet? 10 megabit is enough to stream Netflix. Perhaps putting it another way will help -- according to the FCC's most recently release Internet reports[1], only 13% of subscribers have at least 940 mbps down. However, 57% are at least 100 mbps, but less than 940 mbps. There's a juicer market segment for gig and below than there is for above gig. Increasing the prices to attract 13% of the market isn't terribly worth it in this case. 1. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-395960A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-395960A1.pdf
- vel0city 3y ago
  There's a ton of households with >100Mbit home internet. There's pretty few with >1Gbit even available, even fewer actually subscribed.
dacryn 3y ago
it also means your home network is slower. Why should a backup from my laptop to my file server be limited to 1gbps? Has nothing to do with outside connection. Tehre are a lot of use cases for faster home networking irrelevant of network speed to the external world
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  Sure, but it's just a single port LAN router. If you have a 10G switch it's going to have a MAC table and let your laptop talk directly to your file server over Ethernet. Otherwise the wireless throughput is nowhere near gigabit so you would be limited by that anyway.
  - averageRoyalty 3y ago
    You're assuming flat subnet without VLANS. If you bother doing backups, segmenting them off is a pretty standard security practice.

There are still far more people below gigabit speeds than there are people hitting their gig. As more fiber is deployed that may change, but it's still a very functional device regardless.

smcleod 3y ago

The cost of 2.5G chipsets is so low it really shouldn't matter especially for a 'premium' product like this.

joshspankit 3y ago
Exactly my thought. Why not just spend the little extra and do 2.5G ports. There is one potential hurdle though: they specifically mention that it can handle 1G of traffic even if you enable a bunch of features. They would have had to upgrade the processors to be able to make the same claim at 2.5
- smcleod 3y ago
  That's with all the features on though right? I'm sure a lot of folks wouldn't be using VPN, deep packet inspection, ad blocking, a large number of routes and vlans, IDS, caching etc all at once, it hardly takes any CPU processing to simply route 2.5G (or hell, even 10G) through a firewall.
  - joshspankit 3y ago
    Solid points, but there’s a little bit of history (the details are fuzzy for me so apologies to anything I get wrong): When 1Gbps internet connections were starting to be widely available Unifi put out some “1Gbps” products that could only route 1Gbps with nothing turned on. It quickly dropped to 300Mbps if someone wanted to use any of the Unifi features and people called them out. If they are making it a point to address that in this current product I feel like they want to make sure that type of call out doesn’t happen again.
    - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
      This is surprisingly common, SonicWall devices are kind of market segmented by how much they can process with security services enabled. We installed 50/50 fiber at a customer location and their SonicWall had a gig WAN, but with the device set to "Maximum Security" it only got about 30-35 meg download speed. "Performance Optimized" let it hit the 50/50 lmao
- lukeholder 3y ago
  It’s called market segmentation. Their other machines do 2.5-10g but this isn’t those products.
vel0city 3y ago
This thing is listed at $150. That's not exactly a "premium" product. Linksys sells routers for more money than this.
ksec 3y ago
I dont think a $149 Mesh router is exactly in the premium segment. I guess they could always do a Tri-Band, WiFI 6E with 2 2.5xGbps Ethernet for $199. ( That would be awesome )
poisonborz 3y ago
It's not the cost of ports, but doing all the traffic processing for +500% of bandwith.
- smcleod 3y ago
  2.5G is absolutely nothing for modern chipsets and processors.
  - poisonborz 3y ago
    And do they cost the same? I also wouldn't call it nothing, 2.5g switches have much higher consumption and get hotter, let alone 10g.
    - smcleod 3y ago
      I’ve got 2.5G switches at home and they easily run off 12V 0.8A power adapters (8 port 2.5G 1x 10g)
      - manmal 3y ago
        I don’t know if you mean managed switches, but unmanaged switch processing is way less complex than routing.
      - midasuni 3y ago
        Switching packets in hardware is trivial (assuming you have a chip). If you want to process them in software you need something more beefy.

moondev 3y ago

With that logic why does it even have a gigabit uplink, after all three are still people out there that are not "hitting their 100Mbit/s" yet?

I_Am_Nous 3y ago
If we're being arbitrary who cares if it has fast Ethernet? 10 megabit is enough to stream Netflix. Perhaps putting it another way will help -- according to the FCC's most recently release Internet reports[1], only 13% of subscribers have at least 940 mbps down. However, 57% are at least 100 mbps, but less than 940 mbps. There's a juicer market segment for gig and below than there is for above gig. Increasing the prices to attract 13% of the market isn't terribly worth it in this case. 1. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-395960A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-395960A1.pdf
vel0city 3y ago
There's a ton of households with >100Mbit home internet. There's pretty few with >1Gbit even available, even fewer actually subscribed.

dacryn 3y ago

it also means your home network is slower. Why should a backup from my laptop to my file server be limited to 1gbps? Has nothing to do with outside connection. Tehre are a lot of use cases for faster home networking irrelevant of network speed to the external world

I_Am_Nous 3y ago
Sure, but it's just a single port LAN router. If you have a 10G switch it's going to have a MAC table and let your laptop talk directly to your file server over Ethernet. Otherwise the wireless throughput is nowhere near gigabit so you would be limited by that anyway.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  You're assuming flat subnet without VLANS. If you bother doing backups, segmenting them off is a pretty standard security practice.