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Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

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181–190 of 407 posts

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 equip…

> Despite this it felt speedy!!

When the most common data transfer technology is a POTS modem that can do 56kb/second...

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#182
post #100
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.

My 4k blu ray rips range between 60 and 100 GB. These would not even be close watchable over 20mb/s.

Let's not even talk about how miserable it would be to download modern games over this.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#183
post #80
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…

Fish tape and a cheap endoscope are the tools you want.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#184
post #80
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…

Your details are crazy, especially the drone, but the overall concept is feasible. I did this professionally for years.

Wheeled or tracked R/C cars are much easier to control, and can pull a greater force horizontally without losing control. In the 90s it was somewhat standard, especially in office environments with drop ceilings, to use a little 9.6v Tyco Fast Traxx to zip a pullstring across the ceiling grid, then use the string to pull the much heavier cables. (I'm not sure what's in use today, but I put a LOT of miles on that Tyco.)

Leave some slack at each end, sufficient to lift the cable up and place it in ceiling hangers "later", wink wink. Because leaving it flopped along the ceiling grid wasn't professional, nudge nudge.

Anyway, you don't splice in the middle. Neeeeever do that. Hidden splices are madness-inducing. If you need a mid-span location, you should be pulling all your runs from/to a closet and just use that as a distribution frame.

In your case, you could pull string from both ends, tie the strings together, then use the strings to pull a direct run of cable.

(Having that big rechargeable 9.6v battery came in handy other ways, too. There were plenty of times where I needed a talk path but only had a dry pair. Hook up the battery in the loop, with a butt-set or plain old beige phone at either end, et voila!)

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#185
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jumbo frames are not a thing on the internet. The internet has fossilized at 1500 byte MTU.

> The internet has fossilized at 1500 byte MTU. the internet has a whole bunch of non ethernet stuff, a lot of which has different frame sizes. Its totally possible that backhaul is running jumbo frames, or something like it, but you'd never really know that. Conversely ADSL has odd frame sizes(inherited from ATM; 48 bytes if I remember correctly), but you don't see that because its hidden from you. Cable has a frame…

ATM used 53-byte "cells".

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#186

Ethernet forever. It feels like the only thing in this godforsaken industry that is anywhere near "it just works."

I live in a world where my 1989 Macintosh SE can talk to my 2020 Raspberry Pi. It's not all bad =)

That's nothing - I've talked to people from the 1910s. Let me know when computers get that flexible!

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#187
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.

20Mb/s is enough? Is this a joke? A single youtube full HD stream can reach 7Mb/s. Literallywatching a youtube movie and doing something else will saturate that link. In fact I think it's so low it will negatively impact basic website loading time. Just going to reddit.com loads 18.2 MB of resources. This will take about 8 seconds on your "useable for everything".

My internet connection has 15Mb/s down Thank you very much. So while I'm not your parent I can totally see how that 20 is totally fine. So if you are in a corner of the house you can't get Wifi to that's on par why not use that cable if it exists?

Would I want to use it to transfer large files around internally nowadays? No.

Works for everything else assuming you are the only user of that cable in that corner basement room? Absolutely.

Also insert appropriate "kids these days" joke. I guess it's like HD. Once you have it, you are not going back. Do I need a triple A game I just bought and want to play to download in 2 minutes vs 2 hours? No. But kids these days expect it I guess. No patience.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#188

It's only disappointing that the most common standard nowadays is 1GB/s. I feel like there is a big gap and standards like 2.5GB/s or 5GB/s were somehow ignored and 10GB/s is a big jump up (also price wise)

2.5Gbps seems to have become the new reasonably-affordable thing.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#189
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…

What hardware adapters are you using?

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#190
post #34

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.

I'm pretty sure a switch is just an L2 bridge but still uses the ethernet address management mechanism (mac addresses) not the L3 IP (or whatever) address / routing mechanisms. Modern ethernet, on wires anyhow, is very different from the original one with a shared broadcast domain. Ironically, wireless networks are still very much like the original "you've got a piece of wire and everyone yells into it after listenin…

> Ironically, wireless networks are still very much like the original "you've got a piece of wire and everyone yells into it after listening for a short period of time" mechanism.

Maybe not that ironically since Ethernet derives from ALOHANet, the wireless network connecting Hawaiian schools. Early Ethernet was basically ALOHANet piped over a wire instead of radio waves just like cable tv for a while was just broadcast TV over wires instead of radio waves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet

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