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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

#201

Post by ethbr1 »

hamburglar wrote: post #194
burntalmonds wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And on the plywood, go buy a 4x8 foot sheet and cut it into 4 4x2 foot sheets. These are easy to carry into your attic one or two at a time and you can lay them down as “tiles” that span 4 16in joists. Easy to just lay them down (screwed to the joists) to where you need to get and also continue extending your tiles later if you want to either get further or complete your “floor” for storage purposes. And you can stil…

If you ask nicely and go at a not-busy time, larger home improvement stores will generally cut them for you there.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#202

Post by projektfu »

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.

I think the only part that hasn't been "fixed" is that it sends frames. 10Base-T is a new topology and cable with the bus virtualized in a hub. Switched Ethernet is like a different, intelligent network larping as Ethernet to naive stations. Signaling changes as you increase data rates and media now stretches from copper to fiber and the standard has retired baseband coax above 10Mbps. It's cool that they've made it work and kept it under the same "roof" of standards, so that we don't have to make so many vendor decisions or have regret building out one vendor's network and watching another one with different cabling or signaling take off with higher speeds and lower prices.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#203

Post by ethbr1 »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #199
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…

Should I be surprised that the reactions posted here range from "I stretched a cable across the ceiling like two tin cans and a string" to "I will fly a drone into my attic". Instead of: "I took my $500k/year tech salary which I formerly spent on Teslas and cardboard apartments and just hired a competent electrician or other tradesman to pull cable to every room."

Finding a competent electrician these days, for a residential job, can be the difficult part.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#204

Post by eimrine »

Shaanie wrote: post #163
graphe wrote: 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.

20 Mb/s is terrible. Sure, it'll work in some sense, but I'd go mad if that's the best I could get. A good wifi setup is way better than a cabled 20 Mb/s unless you absolutely need consist and better latency for some reason.

Doesn't a modern Wi-fi still has worse ping than CAT4 cable?

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#205

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

kalleboo wrote: post #99
theblazehen wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not blocking ICMP, then PMTUD will take care of any issues where other hosts don't support jumbo frames

I'll try it. If that's the case it's a shame we didn't take the chance with IPv6 to push to higher default MTUs since IPv6 already relies to a much higher degree on PMTUD since it lacks fragmentation.

Well, the minimum MTU increased at least - it's 1280 bytes in IPv6 vs something ridiculous like 68 bytes in IPv4.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#206

Post by ToucanLoucan »

ethbr1 wrote: post #191
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I spent a good amount of time in our house the first fall setting up PoE cameras, which involved much time crawling around the attic. Hell of a workout and can be unpleasant but extremely doable.

Agreed. It's not rocket science. Unless you're mobility limited, everything in an attic should be accessible. The main considerations are: - Do work when it's cold outside. Do not be up there when it's warm and sunny - Wear a breathing mask. N95 / painter's mask works fine. Glass insulation particles aren't lethal, but also aren't stuff you want in lungs - Think twice. Then move. Slowly. And feel you're standing on s…

I actually brought up an old LED rope that I wasn't doing anything with and just left it there unplugged for future needs. Probably will be dead by the time I need to work up there again, haha.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#207

Post by wannacboatmovie »

tzs wrote: post #169
bombcar wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hire someone to run the cable for you, it's not a terribly hard job. The most expensive part is getting out there. So keep an eye out for a neighbor who has an electrician doing work and maybe see how much to just move the cable. Drones is overthinking it.

> 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…

Considering that you can make > $20/hr flipping burgers in Seattle I'd say you are off by an order of magnitude. No reasonable skilled tradesman (or even unskilled handyman) is doing anything for $20. It's borderline insulting.

They have expenses, fuel, insurance. Most charge $100 as a trip fee.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#208

Post by hnlmorg »

stephenr wrote: post #102
hnlmorg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the commenter but I’ve heard people make statements like that time and time again, only for those limits to be obliterated a few years later. The thing is, the moment a new upper bound becomes available, developers find a way to use it. It’s like the freeway problem that adding more roads ironically adds to congestion. Take storage, the greater the storage capacity of media increased, the larger game assets becam…

> 4k on a lot of streaming services is compressed to hell and back to work with people on slower internet connections. A 4K UltraHD Bluray (that's 100GB for one movie) has a maximum bitrate of "just" 144Mbps. If you're suggesting online streaming services have some swathe of content that's (checks notes) in excess of 7x the bitrate used for 4K Bluray discs, I'd love to hear about it. > video game streaming services a…

> A 4K UltraHD Bluray (that's 100GB for one movie) has a maximum bitrate of "just" 144Mbps. If you're suggesting online streaming services have some swathe of content that's (checks notes) in excess of 7x the bitrate used for 4K Bluray discs, I'd love to hear about it.

We are still a long way off the parity with what our eyes can process so there's plenty of room for bitrates to grow.

Plus the average internet connection isn't just streaming a video. It's kids watching online videos while adults are video conferencing and music is being streamed in the background. Probably with games being downloaded and software getting updated too.

A few hundred Mbps here, another few there. Quickly you exceed 1 gigabit.

> I'd have thought latency was a far bigger concern here, but even if not: it's still just sending you a 4K video stream.. it just happens to be a stream that's reacting to your input.

Latency and jitter matter too. But they're not mutually exclusive properties.

Plus if you're streaming VR content then that is multiple 4k streams per device. And that's on top of all the other concurrent network operations (as mentioned above).

You're also still thinking purely about current tech. My point was that developers create new tech to take advantage of higher specs. Its easy to scoff at comments like this but I've seen this happen many times in my lifetime -- the history of tech speaks for itself.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#209

Post by massysett »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #168
hnarn wrote: post #164

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 Obviously a bit late for this, but I don’t understand, if there’s “coax to nearly every room” how can it also be “not feasible” to run new cables? If nothing else surely you could just run ethernet or even fiber in the physical channels now used by coax? Especially if the alt…

OP could almost be describing my house. New construction, coax to every room, no ethernet. And the builder specifically warned me not to try to use the existing coax to pull a new drop because it's all filled with fireproof foam/insulation stuff.

It’s always possible to run new Ethernet cable. Just think like a cable TV installation technician. Run it on the surface, drill through walls and fish as needed. Run it along the exterior if needed.

It’s always possible. Not always pretty, but possible.

Re: Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

#210

Post by Someone1234 »

_yntr wrote: post #12
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.

> 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.

That isn't what is expensive.

If you get 10 GB, the question is, then what? I have bidirectional 1 GB plugged into a $200 EdgeSwitch, which then feeds Cat 6 throughout the home ($100/500 feet). This then filters down to $20-30 unmanaged 1 GB switches elsewhere. The whole thing is under $500.

If I wanted to go up to 10 GB I don't just need to change to a $2K~ EdgeSwitch, I also need to run fiber/6E to be able to deliver more than 2.5 GB to any endpoint, then invest in expensive switching infrastructure elsewhere in the home to turn the incoming 10 GB signal into something more devices can accept (e.g. 1 GB or 2.5 GB).

Safe estimate, is to go from 1 GB bidirectional to 10 GB bidirectional, it would be $5K in equipment and pulling new cable.

For $100/month I can do 10 GB, but I won't because of the equipment cost/diminishing returns rather than the ISP cost difference. If network equipment comes a LONG way, and I can do it for under $1K, I'd consider it.

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