Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 407 posts

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#291

Post by quickthrower2 »

AdamN wrote: post #5
goalieca wrote: 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.

Even now 1gbps is plenty for virtually every end user and I suspect it will be good enough for a long time (maybe VR changes things??).

Only so much data the human brain can pay attention too. And for big data you are running in data centres anyway while you are sending control data back and forth from home.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#292

Post by FFP999 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #266
FFP999 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite this it felt speedy!! When the most common data transfer technology is a POTS modem that can do 56kb/second...

Think more like 2400 or 9600 bps actually :)

True--I was talking more towards the end of the use of coax for Ethernet, which was also the peak of the dialup days.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#293

Post by tyrfing »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #113
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…

Also, check the phone lines. If it's recent enough build, it will use Cat5 (or higher, but probably not) for the phone lines.

Even MUCH older phone lines can push gigabit with G.fast, I have gigabit fiber internet in early 1980s construction that way.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#294

Post by jonathaneunice »

Perhaps more true to say the Ethernet brand is going strong.

What's marketed as "Ethernet" today is vastly different from the 10base5 "yellow hose" originally called Ethernet. Entirely different wiring, signaling, collision management, topology, interconnection strategies, et cetera. But it's been demonstrably the biggest of wins to promote each next generation, however technically different from and incompatible with the previous generation, under the same brand name!

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#295

Post by [deleted] »

gwbas1c wrote: post #290
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…

When I built my house I ran both coax and ethernet to all my TVs. It was worth it. Even though I have an HD Homerun, the fact that my TV's menu's and remote work as-designed for live TV helps make things run much more smoothly.

[deleted]

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#296

Post by flashback2199 »

dhc02 wrote: post #10
WillAdams wrote: post #8

It still kills me that this name was used for a wired, rather than a wireless setup.

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

The name actually makes some sense from the low level system programmer's perspective on the original Ethernet where you flung packets blindly into a single coax cable that snaked around to each workstation.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#297

Post by gwbas1c »

stiray wrote: post #247

I had my mileage in wifi/routers development and I will say you just a proverb: "The one who knows how wireless works, uses cable." ;) When renovating an apartment I have put a shitload of ethernet sockets everywhere, there is no place in 80m2 apartment, where you would be more than 2m away of nearest (including toilet) and as 4 of them were not enough behind TV, I have added a router there. Wifi is just a patch if y…

> where you would be more than 2m away of nearest (including toilet)

When I visit you and poop, do you have a way for me to connect my phone to your wired network?

I'm going to be honest with you: Modern WIFI is really awesome. I don't have problems with reception now that I bought a powerful router. (And "just run a wire" isn't a solution; the devices that had reception problems don't support wired ethernet.)

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#298

Post by bombela »

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…

Just bite the bullet and crawl under the house or in the attic. I have done it many times it's not the end of the world.

The most annoying is to go through fire blocks in the walls. Because this requires you to open up and patch the drywall at 1.5m height if you bring the cable from the attic. From the crawlspace the hardest part is to make sure you drill inside the wall, not through the floor! For that I found that somebody with a powerful magnet in the house while you carry metal washers with you under is helpful to locate precisely the walls. You can often see the nails holding the floor plate as well to fine tune the location.

I recommend a good respirator mask, and a jumpsuit to retain some psychological distance with the spiders.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#299

Post by Galacta7 »

breadwinner wrote: post #103

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%...

I'm curious why the audience would not accept him eating the paper pulp in large cake form? Perhaps because he couldn't reasonably eat the whole cake in front of them (and thus his words)?

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#300

Post by ska »

cortesoft wrote: post #230
tzs wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So keep an eye out for a neighbor who has an electrician doing work and maybe see how much to just move the cable That reminds of an idea I had for an app and/or website. I'm never going to get the time to actually try to make this, so if anyone wants to feel free. I've had small tasks I wanted done that would only take someone with the right skills and equipment a few minutes that I didn't want to DIY either becau…

Isn’t this just taskrabbit?

Pretty similar, but seems like you want the pool of people restricted to those with the tools, skills, and experience to not want to bother for that rate.
Post reply on HN