Anyone using Multi-gig ethernet?

[Zogg]

I just ran across this article on Tech Hive about relatively inexpensive multi-gig wired ethernet to bump up your network, or part of it, to 2.5 or 5.0 Gbps. Just curious if anyone has gone down this path yet?

I may try this with my wired link between my HTPC and my server. The HTPC is an Intel NUC so I'll have to use a USB adapter, and then a PCIe card in the Unraid server if there's driver support, plus two switches.

[KryptoNyte]

I don't. Never saw any reason for it.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I don't. Never saw any reason for it.

One of our local ISPs offer 1.5Gbps internet but I don't see the point of that unless you have networking hardware that supports > 1Gbps which is still very rare for consumer products.

[Zogg]

For me it seems I'm always moving lots of big files around, so it would be nice to move them faster. Plus I was hoping it might help with the spinning circle of wait I see a lot during playback.

[KryptoNyte]

I don't know about solving the spinning circles, but if your hard drives (or SSD's) were fast enough, yeah, I could certainly see the advantage in moving large files around. With an SSD in systems on each end of the Ethernet cable, I never considered moving files at 600 megaBYTES per second!

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by wayner

One of our local ISPs offer 1.5Gbps internet but I don't see the point of that unless you have networking hardware that supports > 1Gbps which is still very rare for consumer products.

Even if you don't have hardware that supports it, there would still be the advantage that you would have more available bandwidth to support several power users on your network without any one person being able to maximize the throughput of your internet connection.

Really depends on what you do in a typical day and how many power users you have in your household.

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I don't know about solving the spinning circles, but if your hard drives (or SSD's) were fast enough, yeah, I could certainly see the advantage in moving large files around. With an SSD in systems on each end of the Ethernet cable, I never considered moving files at 600 megaBYTES per second!

I would agree, I don't think that increasing your network speed will solve the spinning circles.

The spinning circles are much more likely an issue related to CPU processing power at the server, a codec issue of some sort, or possibly an issue in the code of Sage itself.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

Even if you don't have hardware that supports it, there would still be the advantage that you would have more available bandwidth to support several power users on your network without any one person being able to maximize the throughput of your internet connection.

Really depends on what you do in a typical day and how many power users you have in your household.

But what practical applications would use in excess of 1Gbps? The only thing that I can think of is if you were doing some serious Bittorrenting. But for the typicaly family that is average tech requirements with two adults and three kids are not going to need this. A house that has five geeky college students doing a lot of torrenting would maybe test a 1Gbps connection.

Even streaming 4K video uses less than 20Mbps. So you could have 20 people in your house streaming 4K video on Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc and still not reach 50% of a 1Gbps connection.

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by wayner

But what practical applications would use in excess of 1Gbps? The only thing that I can think of is if you were doing some serious Bittorrenting. But for the typicaly family that is average tech requirements with two adults and three kids are not going to need this. A house that has five geeky college students doing a lot of torrenting would maybe test a 1Gbps connection.

Even streaming 4K video uses less than 20Mbps. So you could have 20 people in your house streaming 4K video on Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc and still not reach 50% of a 1Gbps connection.

I can think of several use cases, but they all involve moving large files or blocks of data between systems. For example, backing up a computer to your NAS would benefit greatly with a faster network. Moving those videos you downloaded to the NAS or another computer if you downloaded them with a different system (I do). Moving ISO images of various OSes around to be burned to DVD or stored.

It may or may not help with video playback if the gating item is the hard drive(s) on the other end, but it might.

[KryptoNyte]

You know, it's an interesting question. If anyone is using it and has tested moving files from machine to machine on a network, both with SSD's, I'd be interesting in hearing the results.

It's just a matter of time I suppose before the next stage of Ethernet will be standard.

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by wayner

But what practical applications would use in excess of 1Gbps? The only thing that I can think of is if you were doing some serious Bittorrenting. But for the typicaly family that is average tech requirements with two adults and three kids are not going to need this. A house that has five geeky college students doing a lot of torrenting would maybe test a 1Gbps connection.

Even streaming 4K video uses less than 20Mbps. So you could have 20 people in your house streaming 4K video on Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc and still not reach 50% of a 1Gbps connection.

As I said, it depends on the number of power users in your household.

I've got a 300/15 Mbps connection and that's only because Shaw got rid of their 150/15 package and bumped me up to 300/15. We can have 3-4 Netflix streams going and not be affected by any other background traffic that may be queued up. I only wish we had a faster upload speed. 15mbps is not that fast for when I'm accessing Plex content from outside the house or I'm uploading content to work over VPN.

The greatest benefit I've seen to a faster pipeline is downloading updates for games on the PS4. While I can remember the days of 9600 baud dial up and appreciate that it may take a few minutes to transfer several GB of data, my kids have a different perception of the world and how fast things should move

[wayner]

Agreed that faster upload speed is what is needed for many people. It seems like cable is at a structural disadvantage here. My package with Rogers is 350/20 but I often test much faster on the download side. Rogers' Gig service gives 1Gbps download but only 50Mbps upload. Bell's service gives more symmetric service.

[Tiki]

You need to remember that LAN speed and WAN speed are 2 different things. Just because you don’t see a need for a higher speed internet connection doesn’t mean there isn’t a valid use case for a highs speed internal network.

Not too many years ago even a 10Mbps download speed from an internet provider was considered lightning fast, but most home networking gear was 100Mbps. So historically, home networks were usually much faster than internet connections. Now most home networks are 1Gbps, and internet speed are getting close to that (some providers are even offering more than that). So it makes sense that home networking gear would get faster.

[sic0048]

My network switch (Aruba 2500-48poe bought used on Ebay for $100) has a couple of 10Gps ports, but I have no reason to use them.

Perhaps one day there will be a need, but I don't think the average residential user will need anything faster than 1Gps for years (decades) to come. Heck, most US internet speeds are well below 1Gps. So unless you are moving huge files on the LAN, there is no need for anything faster.

If anything, I suspect most residential use is through wireless access points now. Faster wireless is coming and that is a good thing, but it's still below 1Gps speed right now.

[wayner]

I would think that the best use of 10G ports would be to interconnect to another switch. But you already have a 48 port switch so you probably only need one.

[jvl711]

I use adapter teaming on my Hyper-v server. I have two 1 gig ports teamed to a Mikrotik switch. I run a dozen or so VMs on the machine (Including SageTV), so I figured it would be nice to have a little extra headroom.

If I had a 10gig port available on the server and switch I would use it.

Josh

[mlcarson]

My home network has been 10Gbs for some time. My recommendation was always to use single-mode fiber optic cabling for anything beyond 1Gbs unless it's in the same room and then use DAC because it's cheaper. If you would stick by this rule then CAT5E is all you need for copper cabling and there would be no need for CAT6, CAT6A, or CAT7 cabling. The RJ45 CAT standards are never going to be as good as fiber options. Multimode fiber has had changing standards too for higher bandwidth which is why single-mode should be used. Single-mode is also less expensive at this point.

This multigig switch being referenced in the first post is simply a cheap way of getting to 2.5Gbs using CAT5E and above cabling. 10Gbs has a distance limitation and requires a lot of power and associated heat dissipation to achieve for RJ45 cabling. NBase-T is the standard to utilize what the cabling is capable of and calls for 2.5Gbs, 5Gbs, and 10Gbs tiers. The switch being advertised just supports the lowest Nbase-T tier. It requires NICs capable of Nbase-T which are arguably the most costly part of the networking infrastructure. If you have to purchase new NICs you should just purchase ones with SFP+ slots. You can then get SFP+ modules for the type of cabling that you have. I'm arguing that cabling should be single-mode fiber or DAC rather than RJ45-based since it'll guarantee 10Gbs throughput.

The 10Gbs SFP+ switches have been available for some time. The Mikrotik CRS305-1G-4S+1N offers 4 10Gbs SFP+ ports for $125 and is a managed switch. The one in the article is an unmanaged switch with 5-ports limited to 2.5Gbs priced at $110. This might be breakthrough pricing for an RJ45 cabling infrastructure but you'd be better served by wiring for single-mode fiber (basically future proof) and getting 10Gbs rather than 2.5Gbs throughput. SFP+ modules and cabling are cheap at places like fs.com.

Why does a home need this bandwidth? It generally doesn't. The application that most people will have is backup speeds for something like a home media server.

[wayner]

How do you terminate fiber? I am able to buy 1000 ft of CAT 5E or 6 cable and terminate it myself with a $25 kit. Can you easily make the terminations for fiber yourself.

One thing that I find funny is that I know a few people who have Bell Canada's 1.5 Gbps fiber service and I am pretty sure that none of them have networking gear can handle speeds above 1Gbps.

[mlcarson]

Purchase pre-terminated. For anything in-house, I simply use pre-terminated fiber optic patch cable -- priced at $14 for up to 30 meters. You'll probably need custom lengths for about 30 meters but they'll do it. Connect each end to a surface mount keystone jack and then use something like a 2 meter or 3 meter for the wall to PC connection. The shorter cables are under $5. If you have access to the interior walls (no drywall) then run flex conduit for it. It's really no more difficult than running CAT6 and it's not as fragile as you might think.

I don't make my own CAT6 patch cables anymore so the fiber isn't really any different. I will do the long run terminations to keystones with CAT6 since I still have cable stock and they are easy to do but don't fiddle with the RJ45 terminations since the cables have become so cheap.