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Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

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Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#131

Post by kibwen »

good8675309 wrote: post #121

Ethernet at 50 and still not slowing down - a testament to the saying 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' It's remarkable how this old-school tech has remained relevant in an age of wireless everything. Makes me think of my tech stack, Java, monolith, sql db, etc. and it keeps serving all of my paying customers reliably, even though I'm not using the latest everything.

It's honestly impressive how few qualms people have with the link layer, considering all the kerfuffle that gets raised for the address layer (IPv6) and the transport layer (QUIC) and the application layer (HTTP2/3). It's nice to have at least one protocol that feels "finished" (in a good sense).

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#132

Post by ellisv »

Chabsff wrote: post #66
mangeld wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's already a coax cable run what's stopping you from running an ethernet cable alongside it or replacing it?

Coax runs in residential houses tend not to go through conduits, and often squeeze through holes in joists just barely big enough for the cable. Not to mention that, in my experience, they also tend to involve splitters in the absolute most random of locations. Running Ethernet alongside it is rarely any easier than fishing from scratch.

I haven't run Ethernet, but if I do the drops will be very near the coaxial cables because they're an easy reference.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#133

Post by burntalmonds »

tzs wrote: post #80
jmathai wrote: post #33

This is a comment for folks in homes with coax run for cable TV. Ethernet is great. I wired ethernet to most rooms in our remodel and set up wired access points or jacks in the office to connect directly to my computer. The speeds and consistency over wifi and mesh were remarkable. Especially consistency. We moved, and it's not feasible to run ethernet everywhere in our current home. However, whoever built the home r…

> We moved, and it's not feasible to run ethernet everywhere in our current home. However, whoever built the home ran coax to nearly every room in the house - it's a bit ridiculous How old is the house? If its more than 20ish years old running coax everywhere was a great choice. That would be before CAT5e cable so if they had went with ethernet cable instead of coax you'd be looking at 100 Mb/s. If it was built befor…

Lay some sheets of plywood down in the attic. Then you'll be able to move around easily. Up there you have direct access to the walls of your rooms so you can drill a hole and drop ethernet cable down behind the wall.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#134

Post by sgjohnson »

Almondsetat wrote: post #22
numlock86 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You also need to have 2.5GB capable hardware in all of your home devices though.

No, you don’t. You do need it only if you want to pull 2.5gigs on one device.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#135

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #16
dhc02 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about this every single time I read or hear the word ether. "It means an invisible transfer medium. What were they thinking!?"

That's Aether.

...So calling wifi Aethernet would be hilarious, but I think we can maybe agree that would not have been a great idea for the sake of actually being able to talk about them out loud.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#136

Post by toast0 »

graphe wrote: post #100
tzs wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We moved, and it's not feasible to run ethernet everywhere in our current home. However, whoever built the home ran coax to nearly every room in the house - it's a bit ridiculous How old is the house? If its more than 20ish years old running coax everywhere was a great choice. That would be before CAT5e cable so if they had went with ethernet cable instead of coax you'd be looking at 100 Mb/s. If it was built befor…

Ethernet is switched and under 20Mb/s is more than usable for everything unless you transfer movie files and wait, in which it would take like up a few minutes to watch a video. If you browse it's more than enough.

If you get old equipment to go with your old cabling, ethernet is not necessarily switched. 10 and 100 can be run as a shared medium.

Re: the sibling's suggestion of wifi: If your cabling works at 100, I think the case is pretty clear for wired 100 vs wifi; consistent 100m is better than variable whatever you get. At 10m, not so clear, especially since cabling that's that old is also likely to be daisy chained, so you're looking at maybe a daisy chain of switches running at 10m. That said, cabling is often better than the spec it was tested to, and ethernet cable requirements are for long runs in dense conduit; it's worth trying 100M on old telephone wiring if it's already in the wall to see what you can get.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#137

Post by kjs3 »

jmathai wrote: post #33

This is a comment for folks in homes with coax run for cable TV. Ethernet is great. I wired ethernet to most rooms in our remodel and set up wired access points or jacks in the office to connect directly to my computer. The speeds and consistency over wifi and mesh were remarkable. Especially consistency. We moved, and it's not feasible to run ethernet everywhere in our current home. However, whoever built the home r…

You can get ethernet to coax baluns and get 100Mbps and PoE. They're extremely reliable, passive (so little to break) and cheap. There might be gig versions now. They're used to retrofit older surveillance camera wiring plants to ethernet without ripping out all the cables, but don't really care what type of ethernet device is on each end.

If all you have is old phone wires in the wall, you can get a pair of xDSL (HVDSL) modems back to back and get up to 10Mbps or so. Better than nothing.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#138

Post by ForkMeOnTinder »

eqvinox wrote: post #38
austin-cheney wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be picky the correct term is data gram , which describes layer 2 segmentation. Packets describe segmentation between switches, which is layer 3.

If you want to be picky, you need to get it right first. The actual term is frame . datagram is generally used to refer to layer 4 operation, and the term is not used anywhere in IEEE 802.3. Also the GP is correct to say we fossilized on 1500 byte packets, since the layer 3 MTU is the relevant thing when talking about fossilization in the internet at large. This number was driven by 802.3's standard frame size being…

> You can't roll out larger packets on the internet.

Devil's advocate: why not? We're in the middle of a long-term push for IPv6, and we have interim solutions to help the migration like Teredo tunneling. It's slow going, but we'll get there eventually.

Why don't we start a similar global migration to jumbo frames?

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#139

Post by coin »

teeray wrote: post #129
thehappypm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this too and it is terrific, literally indistinguishable from ethernet. What’s amazing is you can run cable and MoCa on the same wire at the same time!

How does this work with both? Is there a defined band plan standard that cable operators know to avoid? Do you need to install a notch filter on the line coming into the house?

MOCA modems looks for unused bandwidth

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#140

Post by projektfu »

tzs wrote: post #80
jmathai wrote: post #33

This is a comment for folks in homes with coax run for cable TV. Ethernet is great. I wired ethernet to most rooms in our remodel and set up wired access points or jacks in the office to connect directly to my computer. The speeds and consistency over wifi and mesh were remarkable. Especially consistency. We moved, and it's not feasible to run ethernet everywhere in our current home. However, whoever built the home r…

> We moved, and it's not feasible to run ethernet everywhere in our current home. However, whoever built the home ran coax to nearly every room in the house - it's a bit ridiculous How old is the house? If its more than 20ish years old running coax everywhere was a great choice. That would be before CAT5e cable so if they had went with ethernet cable instead of coax you'd be looking at 100 Mb/s. If it was built befor…

Crawlspace is better. You just make your access and then you can drill down with a flexible bit. Pass the cable down, some twine on the other side, then you only have one quick crawl to pull the cable and maybe put up some cable staples to keep it out of the way. In the attic you have to fish the cable all the way down, makes it harder.
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