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New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#381
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem to be solved is that you want to be able to put fibre inside the walls of the building instead of copper. Running a new cable to the switch closet is the thing to be prevented. ...why would you ever not run copper alongside fiber for new construction? If nothing else, PoE is extremely useful, and nothing says that you actually have to connect all of that copper cable to your switch... you can connect it…

The original problem was that everyone runs copper instead of fibre because there are too many existing devices that only have copper. Running both everywhere would require you to buy and terminate twice as much cable as you expect to use, which leads people to running only copper again. If you chose PCs to begin with that come with fibre ethernet or put quality cards in the ones that matter then you could make fibre…

> Running both everywhere would require you to buy and terminate twice as much cable as you expect to use...

Ah. Let's play with that logic a bit:

"Running Ethernet cabling everywhere would require you to buy and terminate far more than twice as much cable as you expect to use. Just run power cables and wire up one extra outlet for a HomePlug in each room.".

Yeah, that checks out. "Powerline Ethernet" devices are actually pretty good these days, and are right around your magic price range... Amazon has them at ~13 USD per unit. [0] Why would anyone bother running a second cable to each room? Thirteen bucks per room has to be way less than the materials and labor cost for the cable run. Doing anything else is, like, really stupid. Don't you agree?

Anyway. You expect to use the cabling that you plan to install... plus some extra for screwups, man.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Linksys-PLEK500-Homeplug-AV2-Powerlin...>

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#382
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're connecting a single device, why the hell would you use that when you could slap a copper SFP or SFP+ module in the switch's cage and run a cable? The problem to be solved is that you want to be able to put fibre inside the walls of the building instead of copper. Running a new cable to the switch closet is the thing to be prevented. But if the wall jacks are fibre then you need some economical way of hook…

Running a new cable is easy. You just use the old cable to pull the new cable. You can run composite cable if you desire copper, fiber and power.

> You can run composite cable if you desire copper, fiber and power.

Oooh. Cool.

By "power" do you mean 120/240VAC, or do you mean much lower voltage DC? I've found some Belden cabling that I think provides mains power and Ethernet, and I've found fiber cabling that I guess carries lower voltage DC, but am having a tough time finding a cable that combines fiber and copper data with mains power. Do you have an example of such a cable handy?

(Full disclosure: I'm refusing to spend more than like five minutes on the search... so I might have been able to dig up examples of such a cable.)

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#383

Jeff: I see a possible problem with your tests that bit me before! ipferf3 is not multithreaded by default. The more capable computers probably have an interrupt rate sufficient to handle 10gig over USB (which likely multiplies the interrupt rate needed), but it's completely possible you're pushing the interrupt rate limits on the Macbook Neo and other lower powered hardware. Any chance you could re-run with `-P 4` w…

Try using iperf3 version 3.16 or better. There used to be a multi-threading problem otherwise.

https://software.es.net/iperf/faq.html

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#384

From the source of the RealTek 8129/8139 PCI NIC driver in FreeBSD: (old, not directly relevant, just amusing) https://elixir.bootlin.com/freebsd/v10.2/source/sys/pci/if_r... /* * RealTek 8129/8139 PCI NIC driver * * Supports several extremely cheap PCI 10/100 adapters based on * the RealTek chipset. Datasheets can be obtained from * www.realtek.com.tw. * * Written by Bill Paul * Electrical Engineering Department * C…

> unless you happen to have a 400Mhz PII or some equally overmuscled CPU to drive it Oh no!

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