Live data from Hacker News

Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

spectrum.ieee.org

151–160 of 407 posts

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#151
post #12
post #2

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.

> 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.

Can you say what country?

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#152
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…

I thought ethernet was more of the wire protocol than the cable. I could have sworn that the "ethernet" cables when I first started working were coax, and the article talks about the first ethernet being on coax. Seems like ethernet in modern usage is synonymous with CAT5.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#153
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to get something supposedly more stable than wifi when ethernet cabling is not feasible is to use your house's electric wiring and run data through that. There are kits which offer data rates in gigabits (although based on a few reviews I read the actual speed vary greatly). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-line_communication https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/powerline/tl-pa70...

The few times I have run into these, the actual performance is terrible. Wifi is almost always better.

Aside from the terrible and inconsistent performance, the bigger problem is the sheer amount of electrical noise introduced into the line which can adversely affect electrical appliances and devices.

Personally, I just don't find all the drawbacks worth it.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#154

Metcalfe, inventor of ethernet, predicted in 1995 that the internet would collapse the next year, because the underlying tech couldn't possibly scale. He ended up having to literally eat his own words. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Metcalfe#:~:text=24%5D%...

Literally not a piece of cake. :D

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tell that to the person who said "trie" should be pronounced "tree"!

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That shouldn't be happening, and is a massive security/privacy issue. Your power line devices should be configured to use an encryption key unique to them.

Yep, GP should do a factory reset on both, and pair them. If it stil happens after that, replace them with models that don't have this problem!

I was pretty horrified when I worked out what had happened.

It's from TP-Link, and supposedly does pair and create a secure connection: https://www.tp-link.com/sg/home-networking/powerline/tl-wpa8...

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#157
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…

I thought ethernet was more of the wire protocol than the cable. I could have sworn that the "ethernet" cables when I first started working were coax, and the article talks about the first ethernet being on coax. Seems like ethernet in modern usage is synonymous with CAT5.

Ah yes, "Thick Ethernet" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5 and "Thin Ethernet" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2

Ten whole megabits to share between up to 30 computers, on a single multidrop bus.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#158
post #136
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

Worth trying on a shorter run of CAT3, yes. Worth trying on a standard untwisted two pair phone line? Nope. Good luck getting even 5meters.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#159
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…

I thought ethernet was more of the wire protocol than the cable. I could have sworn that the "ethernet" cables when I first started working were coax, and the article talks about the first ethernet being on coax. Seems like ethernet in modern usage is synonymous with CAT5.

The first Ethernet was on coax yes. It was also a shared physical bus so the 10 megabit was often shared among a room full of computers. Despite this it felt speedy!!

But times have changed a lot. In those days there was more focus on collision detection and avoidance which is no longer relevant with today's switches.

Ps it was not the same coax as for TV. TV coax has 75 ohms impedance. Ethernet (and most radio equipment) uses 50 ohms. It was annoying not being able to those cable TV stuff but handy for me as a radio amateur to be able to use the same cables.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#160

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.

Ethernet has been redone from scratch several times. What has remained fairly constant is its frame and address layouts - an example of Kleinrock’s “narrow waist” pattern in protocol design.
Post reply on HN