Translation: The chip running the NIC is faster because it was built to handle > 1Gbit data rates. When it's stuck at 1Gbit, all that extra processing power means it processes packets more quickly than adapters that are only built to handle 1Gbit and results in lower network latency.
I'm already able to measure as low as 0.008ms on my home network. That's my desktop pinging my PFSense firewall through my HP 1Gb switch.
According to my switch specs, a 64byte packet has a maximum latency of 2.3us. Seeing the ping must go through the switch twice, that is already 4.6us, or 1/2 of the total latency. Now you need to include interrupt and processing time on the firewall to receive and respond to the ICMP ping. There is also the time for my desktop to receive and processing the ping.
I am sure the NIC adds some amount of latency, but I can't see it being very much. Probably less than 1us.
You're absolutely correct that the added latency introduced by the NIC is minimal. However, the claim that there's less NIC-induced processing latency is also probably true. It might be an insignificant difference you'll never notice at the keyboard, but the claim can probably be made truthfully and might entice prospective customers regardless. It's not snake oil because its factual, but it's probably a gain that won't easily translate into some tangible benefit.
It's a lot like Bigfoot Networks' claims about Killer NICs improving gaming performance by shuffling packets to your local router more quickly. Sure, the old Killer NIC DOES do that, but once those tasty packets leave your local LAN, they're at the mercy of a dozen ISP-owned routers and thousands of miles of wires that all don't give even the tinest crap about the Killer NIC that generated them. Did it make a difference? Yeah it did. Does it really benefit you that it did? Maybe not.
There are unlisted performance metrics on NICs. Try blasting out as much traffic as you can to as many addresses as you can and see if the NIC is actually putting out 1 Gbps of traffic and if the packets are getting issued within 1 ms.
Does it matter for a home network? No but neither does 2.5G and 5G link rates tbh. The router fast path throughput will be the limiting factor before anything else.
I have an Intel i210 on my desktop and i350 on my firewall. Using iperf to send 64byte UDP packets, I am able to send 1Gb/s of 64byte packets. My firewall registers about 1.48mpps of incoming which is line rate. My desktop is hosted with well over 50% cpu usage, but my firewall is mostly idle in the teens.
If all I want to do is do a TCP file transfer, then my desktop only uses about 4% cpu to transfer 114MiB/s over SMB.
I don't see this thing taking off. It's got a few factors working against it:
-1Gbit is quick enough for most wired network needs. -Wireless is easier, simpler, and has dominance in a majority of places -10Gbit already exists
I think it makes more sense to address 10Gbit ethernet's shortcomings to reduce power requirements and costs while extending range. Efforts there would more directly address situations where 1Gbit is insufficient. Besides that, if 10Gbit were really that attractive to the world, costs would already be falling due to demand driving competition and forcing innovation. The reality is that the market forces aren't there in sufficient quantities to justify an intermediate speed solution.
Counterpoint: The install base of Cat 5e and Cat 6 is far, far greater than that of Cat 6a and Cat 7 (or fiber), and rewiring is expensive. That alone makes this a much cheaper solution than 10GbitE (acknowledging that, yes, you can run 10GBASET over Cat 6 at a reduced range, 55m, but this would provide fallback to intermediate rates).
Wireless definitely isn't dominant in the places where I work, and it certainly isn't easier or simpler. There's a lot of places that could use this as an upgrade path that wouldn't consider rewiring for 10GbE.
It's tricky. I don't think there is a solution to the 10Gb issues just waiting for enough demand/effort spent to find it. Fundamentally you are just doing something that is hard to do and process improvements are probably the only thing that will get power/costs down to more consumer friendly levels. Even if that does happen it doesn't do anything to address the cables portion of things. The higher frequencies used by 10Gb require higher quality cables that can support those frequencies.
2.5Gb and 5Gb have a chance to come in at price points that could actually be viable in the consumer market. Heck Intel could include 2.5Gb or 5Gb in their next chipset and jump start things over night.
They could include 10Gb if they really wanted. They already have a 14nm SoC Xeon 8core/16thread platform with an integrated 10Gb 5xx dual-port nic for less than $1k, and the entire system consumes around 40watts theoretical max. The nic is effectively free at that price and incredibly low power.
The only reason it works for the SoC is because 14nm makes 10Gb trivial. The trouble is finding unused 14nm capacity to fab chipsets, no one wants to waste bleeding edge fabs for such low margin products.
Intel's high end NICs went from dual-port 10Gb @ (32nm 15watt $600) to quad-port 40Gb @ (28nm 8watt $400). Imagine going to 22nm or even 14nm.
The new rates of 2.5G and 5G have already taken off in the enterprise networking for the purpose of connecting Switches to WiFi Access points. The enterprise products with these capabilities have been in the market since 1H of 2015. These new chips brings that capability to the SMB and Client space.
This technology is being promoted by an group of companies under an organization called NBASE-T alliance. The products in the market are listed on their website. See www.nbaset.org
1Gbit is a bottleneck in my home network, and 10Gbit is too expensive and overkill. Wireless is also definitely not simpler, and is just not consistent. Especially in an apartment building like mine, which has Cat6 in the wall. 2.5Gbit would be a huge improvement for me.
Cat 5e/6 are good for 45/55 meters with 10G wired connections; which is good enough for most residential use, unless you're on a building owned network running out of a basement wiring closet you're probably capable of running 10G on your existing wiring. Outside of enterprise relatively few people actually need 100m cable runs.
It should work, yes. However, wouldn't you like the piece of mind of a NIC that will fall back to 5G or 2.5G if the 10G connection isn't working or auto-sensing fails, rather than fall back to 1G? No one likes the experience of thinking that 50 m should be good enough and then having it not be.
Seriously, if I can use my existing CAT5e at 5Gbit, I'm sold. Currently teaming NIC's to get 2Gbit and it's plenty fast but definitely a pain in the ass, and only has that amount of throughput from two PC's that each have teaming going on.
I guess it really comes down to price and availability. If I can buy a 5 port switch and a few NIC's for, say, $200, it's a no brainer investment.
How do you connect an 802.11ac access point that can handle > 1 Gbps right now, with a media server in your home? None of the AC APs I've seen include 10G ports. 10G switches aren't exactly cheap. 10G ports aren't very prevalent in the consumer space.
Even in education/business settings, 10G ports aren't cheap, or even plentiful. Nor is CAT6/7 cabling. But 802.11ac APs are.
Desktop-to-switch connections don't really need to be faster than 1 Gbps, although faster is always better. But AP-to-switch, switch-to-switch, and switch-to-server definitely needs to be faster than 1 Gbps, but 10G isn't always practical.
The Cisco Aironet 3800 supports 2x2.6gbit wifi links and has a 10G uplink port. One vendor I found selling it wanted ~$1100. The Aruba Networks AP-335 has a similar wifi capability but is only backed by a 5G wired connection and sells for $1300. As with most enterprise grade hardware, if you have to ask where it can be found or how much it costs; you probably can't afford it.
We get a decent discount and get them for ~600 and have been deploying them everywhere. And yeah, we're future proofing by deploying 3800 switches which support PoE and 5G. It makes sense. 10G is regulated to the uplinks between switches and servers.
Brace yourself for one of those stupid automobile analogies. Though I usually decry them, I think that using one in this case will help make sense of the situation without tanking the discussion with unneeded anger and resentment.
You've purchased a large boat. The boat is solely for recreation. Let's say you love to go fishing and had disposable income available so rather than saving it for some other purpose, you picked up a loan and bought your dream boat. Unfortunately, your car can't safely tow it because it's too large and heavy. So you do what any American would do and you purchase a pickup truck that's more than enough to pull your boat. In your mind, the truck was a necessity rather than a luxury. Unfortunately, you failed to realize it only became a necessity because you purchased a boat. Now you're encumbered with dealing with all of the things a truck needs thanks to your recreational boat.
Now let's break off and take a look at a "home media server" and put it into perspective. You have a device supplying a service to your house and you feel you need higher network bandwidth to make use of it. In other words, you can't tow your boat to the lake the way you want to tow it. In the end, the solution to your problem is pretty simple because the need for more than 1Gbit (suspect anyway since even multiple HD streams won't saturate a 1Gbit link nor will most mechanical hard drives and using solid state storage for a media server is...well, now you have a yacht instead of a boat) only exists because of an unnecessary media server in the home. My advice, save the money and the time by dumping that home IT administration responsibility because it's not needed to begin with and you'll be happier with the added simplicity it brings to your life.
10G is expensive and homes have been sitting on 1G for nearly 2 decades. It's believable that there will soon be a day where people want more than 1G networks. Wireless is convenient and the performance is impressive but it won't match the bandwidth of 8 copper lines.
To add another counter point, what do you think those wireless routers are connected with? 10GbE does exist, but it uses a lot more power and is more expensive. You are talking typically 5-7w per port. As mentioned in this article, the higher end chipset uses 3w for 5GbE and the lower end chipset is likely to use a little less.
I assume 2.5GbE is even less than that.
5-7w is quite a bit of power for a laptop, especially something like an ultrabook. So I doubt you'll be seeing 10GbE chipsets in laptops. You might see 2.5/5GbE chipsets in laptops soonish, especially higher end ones.
You also get in to the switch layer, 5-7w per port for something like a 16 port switch needs active cooling and a big power supply. 3w per port MIGHT be able to get away with good passive cooling. A 2.5GbE switch is almost certainly going to be able to get away with passive cooling.
I have little doubt that wireless routers are moving towards at least 2.5GbE ports. A current 4:4 MU:MIMO router in an ideal use case as a bridge can absolutely hit 1000Mbps over wireless, saturating the port. Even in operation as a multi-user device, it can likely hit 700-800Mbps in a good use case. As 802.11ac moves steadily closer to wide spread MU:MIMO clients as well as eventually 160MHz, you'll see a lot more instances where the Ethernet port on the wireless router is holding back wireless performance. Once 802.11ax comes along in a few years with it's promised increases in spatial efficiency and wide channels, a 1Gbps port is going to be a serious hindrance.
On a consumer router, a 10GbE NIC, let alone FIVE ports supported at that speed is a serious cost and power consideration. Your typical current Wifi router is looking at about 3-5w of power consumption for it's 5 GbE ports and another 3-15w for the SOC and radios. Moving to 10GbE means bumping the switching fabric up to consuming 25-35 watts, even with active cooling, not something you can fit in a typical router box, not with the 5-15w you have for the SOC and radios, let along the extra routing performance on a SOC that you'd need. Even 3w a port would be stretching it, but I bet you could easily shoe horn in NICs running in 2.5GbE mode and an upgraded routing SOC that can handle 2.5Gbps of throughput in a relatively ideal routing setup.
Sure, few people have connections like that to the internet, but it is like winter...it is coming. A few "elites" have actual gigabit internet connections and a handful of small providers are trialing and looking at 2Gbps internet connections in the US and around the world (my 100/100Mbps connection is jealous). A fair number of users need that performance at home.
Also, 10GbE works at a maximum distance of 55 meters over Cat6 and 45 meters over Cat5e. Max and under ideal use cases. You've got a bundle of Cat6 together running next to some power lines and telephone lines and I'd bet anything you probably couldn't get 30 meters on Cat6 for 10GbE.
5GbE can run on Cat6 in a typical installation (that includes bundles) at 100 meter distances, 2.5GbE on Cat5e to 100 meter distances. The home user can likely run 10GbE just fine, but the typical business user can't and frankly a few of my less than ideal runs in my house on Cat5e might not manage 10GbE. Like the line from my ONT box to my router for my internet connection is on Cat5e and it stretches about 25 meters, but near the line from my main panel to my sub-panel that actually provides most of the power to my house and it also runs for a distance next to both the telephone line (which is no longer in use though), some coax for cable (also not in use) and a couple of other network cables for some portion of it's run.
But 2.5GbE should be no sweat. In fact, it likely could support 5GbE over that distance and installation.
Use wireless all the time of course. I also have everything that can be possibly wired, wired.
Most of my stuff, 1GbE is frankly overkill. I don't need even a 100MbE connection for my airplay speakers that are wired in my network. My desktop and server on the other hand I saturate dual 1GbE links doing SMB multichannel for transferring files. My laptop that 1GbE NIC is a serious hindrance when the SSD in the laptop is easily capable of >500MB/sec reads and >300MB/sec writes...and no way to do SMB multichannel on it, so I can't even take advantage of my server's dual GbE NICs.
So I'd love to see even 2.5GbE switches hit the market sometime soon. They would likely be a LOT cheaper than 10GbE switches, which seem to be hovering around $75 a port for the cheapest I can find. NICs for desktops or on motherboards are even more than that per port.
I assume 5GbE at this point is likely to also be expensive, but still less. That higher end NIC mentioned I am sure, since it can do 10GbE, is going to hover in the $70-80 range for just the network interface module itself, not including board prices and mark-ups. However, it may promise slightly cheaper per port prices in something like a switch if the company also has larger switch modules in the pipeline. The lower end max 5GbE capable network interface might well be less than $50 and built as a 4 port switch module to go in a router/switch could promise fairly cheap per port prices.
A $30-50 price added on to the BOM of a high end laptop isn't ridiculous. On a high end desktop motherboard, that is reasonably affordable (much more so than 10GbE). A stand alone NIC, that is down right cheap. Instead of an new Intel GbE adapter at $80, you might be paying $120 for a 5GbE adapter. Again, on a switch, you might have an 8 port 5GbE switch that only costs $200-300, which is still expensive, but much more home user friendly than $600+ for 10GbE.
A more cut down 2.5GbE max network interface would probably a little cheaper.
Just saying, I can see a LOT of use cases for 2.5GbE and 5GbE. Ideally I'd love to see 10GbE, but the fact of the matter is, prices just aren't going down very fast on it and there will always be physical limitations to it. Even as power usage comes down on it, the same goes for 2.5GbE and 5GbE. We see a drop from 5w to 3w? You'd likely see 5GbE drop from 3w to 2w.
It's pretty funny that everyone goes around saying 'I want a 10GbE network' and think they can just drop a card into their system, hook up a 10GbE switch and it'll give them that speed. Not that simple at ALL.
There is something else to remember, and that's the simple limit of your average amount of bandwidth between your CPU and peripherals. Your average Haswell/Skylake build has 16pcie lanes off the CPU (graphics), and if that's in use, and your motherboard doesn't provide for an x8/x8 split set, plugging in a 10gb controller into the PCIe x4 off the PCH creates a potential bottleneck.
In fact, they don't recommend plugging in a high bandwidth device like that into the PCH because many of the lanes are hardwired into other motherboard resources (audio/GbE/USB/SATA etc) and share aggregate bandwidth and are still only connected to the CPU by the DMI interface (DMI 2.0 equivalent to PCIe x4 2.0/ DMI 3.0 equivalent to PCIe x4 3.0). You would actually need a high end board (SLI capable) to be able to utilize 10GbE and a high end GPU, which is yet another expense to adoption.
With this 5GbE option in a chip it would make life a little bit easier on adoption as it wouldn't suck up all the available bandwidth in the DMI connection to the CPU, but we're quickly hitting the point where the actual physical CPU design is becoming a limiting factor.
It's a similar situation to how 10GBASET can run on Cat 6, but only sort of supported up to 55m. IEEE 802.3bz promises 2.5GBASET on Cat 5e up to 100 m runs, 5GBASET on Cat 6 up to 100 m runs, and 5GBASET on Cat 5e "on defined use cases and deployment configurations" somewhat shorter than 100m.
According to IEEE 802.3bz, both 2.5G and 5G are specified to run "up to" 100 meters of CAT5e or better cabling. We expect users to be able to achieve 5G over 100 meters of CAT5e over most SMB and consumer use cases.
All we need now are wireless routers with up to 1866 mbps on wireless, 1gbps input for WAN (from ISP) , a couple or more 5 gbps ports and a bunch (4-8) of regular 1 gbps network ports.
This way you could cheaply connect a NAS device / computer / file server to the wireless router, and all the devices in your house (tv , phones, wired computers) can read media from the NAS at up to 5 gbps speed.
Someone needs to make a cheap 3-4 port 5gbps switch IC ... perfect to offer 2-3 x 5 gbps ports and use the other one to connect a 4-8 port regular gigabit switch IC to it on the same PCB.
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evilspoons - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
"Due to the higher clock rate of the controller, in 1G mode the controller is quoted as having has lower latency than standard 1G controllers"Errrwhat?
BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Translation: The chip running the NIC is faster because it was built to handle > 1Gbit data rates. When it's stuck at 1Gbit, all that extra processing power means it processes packets more quickly than adapters that are only built to handle 1Gbit and results in lower network latency.bcronce - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
I'm already able to measure as low as 0.008ms on my home network. That's my desktop pinging my PFSense firewall through my HP 1Gb switch.According to my switch specs, a 64byte packet has a maximum latency of 2.3us. Seeing the ping must go through the switch twice, that is already 4.6us, or 1/2 of the total latency. Now you need to include interrupt and processing time on the firewall to receive and respond to the ICMP ping. There is also the time for my desktop to receive and processing the ping.
I am sure the NIC adds some amount of latency, but I can't see it being very much. Probably less than 1us.
BrokenCrayons - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
You're absolutely correct that the added latency introduced by the NIC is minimal. However, the claim that there's less NIC-induced processing latency is also probably true. It might be an insignificant difference you'll never notice at the keyboard, but the claim can probably be made truthfully and might entice prospective customers regardless. It's not snake oil because its factual, but it's probably a gain that won't easily translate into some tangible benefit.It's a lot like Bigfoot Networks' claims about Killer NICs improving gaming performance by shuffling packets to your local router more quickly. Sure, the old Killer NIC DOES do that, but once those tasty packets leave your local LAN, they're at the mercy of a dozen ISP-owned routers and thousands of miles of wires that all don't give even the tinest crap about the Killer NIC that generated them. Did it make a difference? Yeah it did. Does it really benefit you that it did? Maybe not.
willis936 - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
There are unlisted performance metrics on NICs. Try blasting out as much traffic as you can to as many addresses as you can and see if the NIC is actually putting out 1 Gbps of traffic and if the packets are getting issued within 1 ms.willis936 - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
Does it matter for a home network? No but neither does 2.5G and 5G link rates tbh. The router fast path throughput will be the limiting factor before anything else.bcronce - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
I have an Intel i210 on my desktop and i350 on my firewall. Using iperf to send 64byte UDP packets, I am able to send 1Gb/s of 64byte packets. My firewall registers about 1.48mpps of incoming which is line rate. My desktop is hosted with well over 50% cpu usage, but my firewall is mostly idle in the teens.If all I want to do is do a TCP file transfer, then my desktop only uses about 4% cpu to transfer 114MiB/s over SMB.
BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
I don't see this thing taking off. It's got a few factors working against it:-1Gbit is quick enough for most wired network needs.
-Wireless is easier, simpler, and has dominance in a majority of places
-10Gbit already exists
I think it makes more sense to address 10Gbit ethernet's shortcomings to reduce power requirements and costs while extending range. Efforts there would more directly address situations where 1Gbit is insufficient. Besides that, if 10Gbit were really that attractive to the world, costs would already be falling due to demand driving competition and forcing innovation. The reality is that the market forces aren't there in sufficient quantities to justify an intermediate speed solution.
johnthacker - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Counterpoint: The install base of Cat 5e and Cat 6 is far, far greater than that of Cat 6a and Cat 7 (or fiber), and rewiring is expensive. That alone makes this a much cheaper solution than 10GbitE (acknowledging that, yes, you can run 10GBASET over Cat 6 at a reduced range, 55m, but this would provide fallback to intermediate rates).Wireless definitely isn't dominant in the places where I work, and it certainly isn't easier or simpler. There's a lot of places that could use this as an upgrade path that wouldn't consider rewiring for 10GbE.
kpb321 - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
It's tricky. I don't think there is a solution to the 10Gb issues just waiting for enough demand/effort spent to find it. Fundamentally you are just doing something that is hard to do and process improvements are probably the only thing that will get power/costs down to more consumer friendly levels. Even if that does happen it doesn't do anything to address the cables portion of things. The higher frequencies used by 10Gb require higher quality cables that can support those frequencies.2.5Gb and 5Gb have a chance to come in at price points that could actually be viable in the consumer market. Heck Intel could include 2.5Gb or 5Gb in their next chipset and jump start things over night.
bcronce - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
They could include 10Gb if they really wanted. They already have a 14nm SoC Xeon 8core/16thread platform with an integrated 10Gb 5xx dual-port nic for less than $1k, and the entire system consumes around 40watts theoretical max. The nic is effectively free at that price and incredibly low power.The only reason it works for the SoC is because 14nm makes 10Gb trivial. The trouble is finding unused 14nm capacity to fab chipsets, no one wants to waste bleeding edge fabs for such low margin products.
Intel's high end NICs went from dual-port 10Gb @ (32nm 15watt $600) to quad-port 40Gb @ (28nm 8watt $400). Imagine going to 22nm or even 14nm.
Kamal Dalmia - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
The new rates of 2.5G and 5G have already taken off in the enterprise networking for the purpose of connecting Switches to WiFi Access points. The enterprise products with these capabilities have been in the market since 1H of 2015. These new chips brings that capability to the SMB and Client space.This technology is being promoted by an group of companies under an organization called NBASE-T alliance. The products in the market are listed on their website. See www.nbaset.org
Kamal Dalmia - Aquantia
Gigaplex - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
1Gbit is a bottleneck in my home network, and 10Gbit is too expensive and overkill. Wireless is also definitely not simpler, and is just not consistent. Especially in an apartment building like mine, which has Cat6 in the wall. 2.5Gbit would be a huge improvement for me.DanNeely - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Cat 5e/6 are good for 45/55 meters with 10G wired connections; which is good enough for most residential use, unless you're on a building owned network running out of a basement wiring closet you're probably capable of running 10G on your existing wiring. Outside of enterprise relatively few people actually need 100m cable runs.johnthacker - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
It should work, yes. However, wouldn't you like the piece of mind of a NIC that will fall back to 5G or 2.5G if the 10G connection isn't working or auto-sensing fails, rather than fall back to 1G? No one likes the experience of thinking that 50 m should be good enough and then having it not be.Samus - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Seriously, if I can use my existing CAT5e at 5Gbit, I'm sold. Currently teaming NIC's to get 2Gbit and it's plenty fast but definitely a pain in the ass, and only has that amount of throughput from two PC's that each have teaming going on.I guess it really comes down to price and availability. If I can buy a 5 port switch and a few NIC's for, say, $200, it's a no brainer investment.
phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
How do you connect an 802.11ac access point that can handle > 1 Gbps right now, with a media server in your home? None of the AC APs I've seen include 10G ports. 10G switches aren't exactly cheap. 10G ports aren't very prevalent in the consumer space.Even in education/business settings, 10G ports aren't cheap, or even plentiful. Nor is CAT6/7 cabling. But 802.11ac APs are.
Desktop-to-switch connections don't really need to be faster than 1 Gbps, although faster is always better. But AP-to-switch, switch-to-switch, and switch-to-server definitely needs to be faster than 1 Gbps, but 10G isn't always practical.
DanNeely - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
The Cisco Aironet 3800 supports 2x2.6gbit wifi links and has a 10G uplink port. One vendor I found selling it wanted ~$1100. The Aruba Networks AP-335 has a similar wifi capability but is only backed by a 5G wired connection and sells for $1300. As with most enterprise grade hardware, if you have to ask where it can be found or how much it costs; you probably can't afford it.hechacker1 - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
We get a decent discount and get them for ~600 and have been deploying them everywhere. And yeah, we're future proofing by deploying 3800 switches which support PoE and 5G. It makes sense. 10G is regulated to the uplinks between switches and servers.BrokenCrayons - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
Brace yourself for one of those stupid automobile analogies. Though I usually decry them, I think that using one in this case will help make sense of the situation without tanking the discussion with unneeded anger and resentment.You've purchased a large boat. The boat is solely for recreation. Let's say you love to go fishing and had disposable income available so rather than saving it for some other purpose, you picked up a loan and bought your dream boat. Unfortunately, your car can't safely tow it because it's too large and heavy. So you do what any American would do and you purchase a pickup truck that's more than enough to pull your boat. In your mind, the truck was a necessity rather than a luxury. Unfortunately, you failed to realize it only became a necessity because you purchased a boat. Now you're encumbered with dealing with all of the things a truck needs thanks to your recreational boat.
Now let's break off and take a look at a "home media server" and put it into perspective. You have a device supplying a service to your house and you feel you need higher network bandwidth to make use of it. In other words, you can't tow your boat to the lake the way you want to tow it. In the end, the solution to your problem is pretty simple because the need for more than 1Gbit (suspect anyway since even multiple HD streams won't saturate a 1Gbit link nor will most mechanical hard drives and using solid state storage for a media server is...well, now you have a yacht instead of a boat) only exists because of an unnecessary media server in the home. My advice, save the money and the time by dumping that home IT administration responsibility because it's not needed to begin with and you'll be happier with the added simplicity it brings to your life.
willis936 - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
10G is expensive and homes have been sitting on 1G for nearly 2 decades. It's believable that there will soon be a day where people want more than 1G networks. Wireless is convenient and the performance is impressive but it won't match the bandwidth of 8 copper lines.azazel1024 - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
To add another counter point, what do you think those wireless routers are connected with? 10GbE does exist, but it uses a lot more power and is more expensive. You are talking typically 5-7w per port. As mentioned in this article, the higher end chipset uses 3w for 5GbE and the lower end chipset is likely to use a little less.I assume 2.5GbE is even less than that.
5-7w is quite a bit of power for a laptop, especially something like an ultrabook. So I doubt you'll be seeing 10GbE chipsets in laptops. You might see 2.5/5GbE chipsets in laptops soonish, especially higher end ones.
You also get in to the switch layer, 5-7w per port for something like a 16 port switch needs active cooling and a big power supply. 3w per port MIGHT be able to get away with good passive cooling. A 2.5GbE switch is almost certainly going to be able to get away with passive cooling.
I have little doubt that wireless routers are moving towards at least 2.5GbE ports. A current 4:4 MU:MIMO router in an ideal use case as a bridge can absolutely hit 1000Mbps over wireless, saturating the port. Even in operation as a multi-user device, it can likely hit 700-800Mbps in a good use case. As 802.11ac moves steadily closer to wide spread MU:MIMO clients as well as eventually 160MHz, you'll see a lot more instances where the Ethernet port on the wireless router is holding back wireless performance. Once 802.11ax comes along in a few years with it's promised increases in spatial efficiency and wide channels, a 1Gbps port is going to be a serious hindrance.
On a consumer router, a 10GbE NIC, let alone FIVE ports supported at that speed is a serious cost and power consideration. Your typical current Wifi router is looking at about 3-5w of power consumption for it's 5 GbE ports and another 3-15w for the SOC and radios. Moving to 10GbE means bumping the switching fabric up to consuming 25-35 watts, even with active cooling, not something you can fit in a typical router box, not with the 5-15w you have for the SOC and radios, let along the extra routing performance on a SOC that you'd need. Even 3w a port would be stretching it, but I bet you could easily shoe horn in NICs running in 2.5GbE mode and an upgraded routing SOC that can handle 2.5Gbps of throughput in a relatively ideal routing setup.
Sure, few people have connections like that to the internet, but it is like winter...it is coming. A few "elites" have actual gigabit internet connections and a handful of small providers are trialing and looking at 2Gbps internet connections in the US and around the world (my 100/100Mbps connection is jealous). A fair number of users need that performance at home.
Also, 10GbE works at a maximum distance of 55 meters over Cat6 and 45 meters over Cat5e. Max and under ideal use cases. You've got a bundle of Cat6 together running next to some power lines and telephone lines and I'd bet anything you probably couldn't get 30 meters on Cat6 for 10GbE.
5GbE can run on Cat6 in a typical installation (that includes bundles) at 100 meter distances, 2.5GbE on Cat5e to 100 meter distances. The home user can likely run 10GbE just fine, but the typical business user can't and frankly a few of my less than ideal runs in my house on Cat5e might not manage 10GbE. Like the line from my ONT box to my router for my internet connection is on Cat5e and it stretches about 25 meters, but near the line from my main panel to my sub-panel that actually provides most of the power to my house and it also runs for a distance next to both the telephone line (which is no longer in use though), some coax for cable (also not in use) and a couple of other network cables for some portion of it's run.
But 2.5GbE should be no sweat. In fact, it likely could support 5GbE over that distance and installation.
Use wireless all the time of course. I also have everything that can be possibly wired, wired.
Most of my stuff, 1GbE is frankly overkill. I don't need even a 100MbE connection for my airplay speakers that are wired in my network. My desktop and server on the other hand I saturate dual 1GbE links doing SMB multichannel for transferring files. My laptop that 1GbE NIC is a serious hindrance when the SSD in the laptop is easily capable of >500MB/sec reads and >300MB/sec writes...and no way to do SMB multichannel on it, so I can't even take advantage of my server's dual GbE NICs.
So I'd love to see even 2.5GbE switches hit the market sometime soon. They would likely be a LOT cheaper than 10GbE switches, which seem to be hovering around $75 a port for the cheapest I can find. NICs for desktops or on motherboards are even more than that per port.
I assume 5GbE at this point is likely to also be expensive, but still less. That higher end NIC mentioned I am sure, since it can do 10GbE, is going to hover in the $70-80 range for just the network interface module itself, not including board prices and mark-ups. However, it may promise slightly cheaper per port prices in something like a switch if the company also has larger switch modules in the pipeline. The lower end max 5GbE capable network interface might well be less than $50 and built as a 4 port switch module to go in a router/switch could promise fairly cheap per port prices.
A $30-50 price added on to the BOM of a high end laptop isn't ridiculous. On a high end desktop motherboard, that is reasonably affordable (much more so than 10GbE). A stand alone NIC, that is down right cheap. Instead of an new Intel GbE adapter at $80, you might be paying $120 for a 5GbE adapter. Again, on a switch, you might have an 8 port 5GbE switch that only costs $200-300, which is still expensive, but much more home user friendly than $600+ for 10GbE.
A more cut down 2.5GbE max network interface would probably a little cheaper.
Just saying, I can see a LOT of use cases for 2.5GbE and 5GbE. Ideally I'd love to see 10GbE, but the fact of the matter is, prices just aren't going down very fast on it and there will always be physical limitations to it. Even as power usage comes down on it, the same goes for 2.5GbE and 5GbE. We see a drop from 5w to 3w? You'd likely see 5GbE drop from 3w to 2w.
bill.rookard - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
It's pretty funny that everyone goes around saying 'I want a 10GbE network' and think they can just drop a card into their system, hook up a 10GbE switch and it'll give them that speed. Not that simple at ALL.There is something else to remember, and that's the simple limit of your average amount of bandwidth between your CPU and peripherals. Your average Haswell/Skylake build has 16pcie lanes off the CPU (graphics), and if that's in use, and your motherboard doesn't provide for an x8/x8 split set, plugging in a 10gb controller into the PCIe x4 off the PCH creates a potential bottleneck.
In fact, they don't recommend plugging in a high bandwidth device like that into the PCH because many of the lanes are hardwired into other motherboard resources (audio/GbE/USB/SATA etc) and share aggregate bandwidth and are still only connected to the CPU by the DMI interface (DMI 2.0 equivalent to PCIe x4 2.0/ DMI 3.0 equivalent to PCIe x4 3.0). You would actually need a high end board (SLI capable) to be able to utilize 10GbE and a high end GPU, which is yet another expense to adoption.
With this 5GbE option in a chip it would make life a little bit easier on adoption as it wouldn't suck up all the available bandwidth in the DMI connection to the CPU, but we're quickly hitting the point where the actual physical CPU design is becoming a limiting factor.
bobbozzo - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Hi Ian, I'm not clear on this:2.5GHz and 5GHz will work on Cat 5e cables, or they need Cat 6?
Thanks!
yuhong - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
5Gbit/s is more likely to require Cat 6 I think.johnthacker - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
It's a similar situation to how 10GBASET can run on Cat 6, but only sort of supported up to 55m. IEEE 802.3bz promises 2.5GBASET on Cat 5e up to 100 m runs, 5GBASET on Cat 6 up to 100 m runs, and 5GBASET on Cat 5e "on defined use cases and deployment configurations" somewhat shorter than 100m.Kamal Dalmia - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
According to IEEE 802.3bz, both 2.5G and 5G are specified to run "up to" 100 meters of CAT5e or better cabling. We expect users to be able to achieve 5G over 100 meters of CAT5e over most SMB and consumer use cases.Kamal Dalmia - Aquantia
Kamal Dalmia - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
2.5G and 5G Base-T do not require Cat 6 cabling. They are specified to run up to 100 meters of CAT 5e or better cabling.Kamal Dalmia - Aquantia
cygnus1 - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
"10GBase-T also requires Cat 7 cabling for any serious distance requirements."wat? Heard of Cat6a??? Both will do 100m for 10g
mariush - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
All we need now are wireless routers with up to 1866 mbps on wireless, 1gbps input for WAN (from ISP) , a couple or more 5 gbps ports and a bunch (4-8) of regular 1 gbps network ports.This way you could cheaply connect a NAS device / computer / file server to the wireless router, and all the devices in your house (tv , phones, wired computers) can read media from the NAS at up to 5 gbps speed.
Someone needs to make a cheap 3-4 port 5gbps switch IC ... perfect to offer 2-3 x 5 gbps ports and use the other one to connect a 4-8 port regular gigabit switch IC to it on the same PCB.
JKJK - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
10G Base-T doesn't require Cat 7 for 100m. It requires Cat6A.zodiacfml - Friday, December 23, 2016 - link
Not interested. If I really needed it, I'd buy 2nd hand enterprise hardware for 10Gbps on fiber.