[HN Gopher] Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years
___________________________________________________________________
Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years
Author : pseudolus
Score : 313 points
Date : 2023-11-17 11:53 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| goalieca wrote:
| 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.
| poisonborz wrote:
| It's not so gloomy, 2.5G ports are becoming standard on
| consumer desktop chipsets, and switches are not that expensive.
| For 10G, you can get copper cables easily, but SPFE is more
| common, I guess once chipsets get faster, do not consume as
| much/run as hot, copper might return there as well.
| AdamN wrote:
| 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??).
| api wrote:
| Neural compression is an emerging field and already shows
| some striking compression abilities, especially if the
| compressor/decompressor includes a large model which amounts
| to something like a huge pre-existing dictionary on both
| sides.
|
| Stable Diffusion XL is only about 8 gigabytes and can render
| a shocking array of different images from very short prompts
| with very high fidelity.
|
| 1gbps might be enough for more than we think.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Deterministicly?
| api wrote:
| Sure. The only reason image generators aren't
| deterministic is that you inject randomness. Set the same
| random seed, get the same image. Download Stable
| Diffusion XL and run it locally and try it.
|
| There are models that can be run in both directions. Take
| a source image and generate a token stream prompt for it.
| That's your compressed image. Now run it forward to
| decompress.
|
| CPU intensive but _massive_ compression ratios can be
| achieved... like orders of magnitude better than jpeg.
|
| It's lossy compression, so we're not violating
| fundamental mathematical limits. Those bounds apply to
| lossless compression.
| kibwen wrote:
| Well, the value proposition of image formats are 1.
| transmission, which requires both sender and receiver to
| have the exact same model, which requires us to
| standardize on some model and ship it with everything
| until the end of time, and 2. archival, which would
| require storing the model alongside the file (which might
| more than counteract any data saved from improved
| compression) and would be highly fraught because, unlike
| existing decompression algorithms, it cannot be described
| in simple text (and therefore reimplemented at will),
| which risks making the file inaccessible and defeating
| the point of archival.
|
| It's a cool idea, especially for high-bandwidth, low-
| value contexts like streaming video calls, but I don't
| think it's going to wholesale replace ordinary lossy
| formats for images or prerecorded video delivery (and
| this is without considering the coding/decoding
| performance implications).
| petra wrote:
| Most people using using streaming video don't require
| archival support. The source and the internet archive etc
| can manage the archival part.
| nerdbert wrote:
| From my puttering, image->tokens->image yields something
| that may or not vaguely resemble the original, but is
| never anywhere near identical.
| saintradon wrote:
| My personal experience with VR is 1gbps is plenty, the issues
| with VR more boil down to things like latency (for instance,
| streaming a quest wirelessly with VR desktop basically
| requires Ethernet, with regular wifi the experience is just
| awful).
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Do you have WiFi 6? I found that to be adequate for me and
| my Quest needs.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| 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.
| numlock86 wrote:
| > 1gig is still the standard for wired
|
| A lot of people already get more than that from their ISP. I
| had at least 2.5g on every consumer product from the past 5
| years. Small businesses use at least SFP on the floor level.
| Yada yada yada. Point is it's probably a regional thing.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Nah, you're in a very small minority. Most households have
| few hundred megs at most
| p1esk wrote:
| You're probably in US. Meanwhile in Switzerland people are
| enjoying 25gbps internet:
| https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/
| bitcharmer wrote:
| I'm in the UK. What I stated applies to most countries.
| Switzerland is a niche.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| You also need to have 2.5GB capable hardware in all of your
| home devices though.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| No, you don't. You do need it only if you want to pull
| 2.5gigs on one device.
| whatevaa wrote:
| Yeah, no. You live in a bubble. Most consumers are not above
| 1g even on fiber. It's probably not even regional, it's very
| location specific.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Where I live (the Netherlands) gigabit is available pretty
| much country-wide. Not everyone may subscribe to a gigabit
| plan but it's available to them if they wanted it.
|
| ISPs are now just starting to roll out multi-gig, a few are
| already offering 2.5 or 4gbit plans. Even the ones that do
| not offer multi-gbit plans yet are already installing
| 10gbit capable CPEs. I suspect 10gbit service will become
| available nationwide within a few years.
| stephenr wrote:
| _A lot of people_?
|
| 2.5G is rapidly approaching, if not already past the point,
| for _a lot of people_ where a single machine will _never_ use
| all of that capacity, and the advantage of higher total
| bandwidth is to support multiple people doing high bandwidth
| tasks.
|
| In this scenario a 2.5G (or 10G) router is all that's really
| required to get the benefit, while using the existing 20 year
| old wiring.
| thfuran wrote:
| >rapidly approaching, if not already past the point, for a
| lot of people where a single machine will never use all of
| that capacity
|
| Now where have I heard that before...
| stephenr wrote:
| > Now where have I heard that before...
|
| Ok, sorry, in another 30 years time people might want
| more than 1G to do brain dumps to their robo-shrink.
|
| In 2023, there are very few uses for _home_ users that
| will exceed what a 1G connection can provide.
|
| But please enlighten me about where you think you've
| "heard this before"?
| theryan wrote:
| I believe they are referring to the quote from Bill Gates
| '640K ought to be enough for anyone' in reference to ram.
| stephenr wrote:
| I guess I shouldn't be surprised that someone who
| believes the debunked Gates quote is real, also can't
| comprehend the difference between "for anyone" and "for a
| lot of people".
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > In 2023, there are very few uses for home users that
| will exceed what a 1G connection can provide
|
| Video games are getting bigger all the time. The latest
| Call of Duty apparently is 200GB. On 1gbit you are
| limited to 125MB/s downloads (assuming zero overhead)
| that's almost a half an hour to download. PCIe4 SSD's are
| capable of write speeds of about 7GB/s and PCIe5 SSD's
| are just hitting the market with even faster speeds. At
| 10Gbit you can download that game in less than 3 minutes.
| In neither case are you even approaching the speed at
| which your PC can store that data.
|
| When PCIe5 SSD's go mainstream a home PC user would even
| be able to saturate a 100Gbit connection.
| stephenr wrote:
| Please, I implore you, to read the line you quoted again,
| and then perhaps pull out the old Oxford English, and
| look up what "very few" means.
|
| I'll be generous and give you a hint: it doesn't mean
| _none_.
|
| But your example also has great relevance to the
| "familiar" sentence in my original comment which was:
|
| > 2.5G is rapidly approaching, if not already past the
| point, _for a lot of people_ where a single machine will
| never use all of that capacity, and the advantage of
| higher total bandwidth is to support multiple people
| doing high bandwidth tasks.
|
| I italicised the part that I knew people would somehow
| ignore in my original comment and I've done it again,
| because obviously once wasn't enough.
|
| Here, let me pull out the important words yet again just
| to make it really clear:
|
| > for a lot of people
| hnlmorg wrote:
| 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 became. The faster CPUs
| and system memory became, the heavier our operating
| systems and desktop software became.
|
| Likewise, the faster our internet becomes, the more
| dependent we will become on streaming high fidelity
| content. 4k on a lot of streaming services is compressed
| to hell and back to work with people on slower internet
| connections. And much as Google Stadia was shutdown,
| video game streaming services aren't a failed experiment.
| Plus even with more traditional services, how many of us
| roll our eyes at multi-hour download times for new games?
|
| Once gigabit internet becomes the norm (it's common place
| in a lot of countries already, but it's not quite the
| norm yet) then you'll see more and more services upscale
| to support it, and thus others on the cutting edge of the
| tech curve finding that gigabit internet isn't quite fast
| enough any more. And that will happen sooner than you
| think.
| stephenr wrote:
| > 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 aren't a failed
| experiment
|
| 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.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| AFAIK we're still very far below the dynamic range human
| eyes are capable of seeing, so there's plenty of room to
| need to up the bit depth (and rate) for video if displays
| can improve. Our color gamuts also do not cover human
| vision.
| stephenr wrote:
| So I had to use a calculator to help me here, and I used
| https://toolstud.io/video/bitrate.php, but apparently the
| raw bitrate for 4K@25fps/24bit is 4.98Gbps, which then
| obviously gets compressed by various codecs.
|
| Taking the above 4K@25fps/24bit and pumping it up to
| 60fps and 36bit colour (i.e. 12 bits per channel, or 68
| billion colours, 4096x as many colours as 24bit, and 64x
| as many colours as 30bit) the resulting raw video bitrate
| is 17.92Gbps... so it's an increase of <checks notes>
| about 3.6x.
|
| It seems quite unlikely that we'll have every other
| aspect of 36bit/60fps video sorted out, but somehow the
| codecs available have _worse_ performance than is already
| available _today_.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| My understanding is that today's HDR sensors and displays
| can do ~13 stops of dynamic range, while humans can see
| at least ~20, though I'm not sure how to translate that
| into how much additional bit depth ought to be needed
| (naively, I might guess at 48 bits being enough).
|
| I don't see why we'd stop at 60fps when 120 or even 240
| Hz displays are already available. Also 8k displays
| already exist. The codecs also have tunable quality, and
| obviously no one is sending lossless video. So we can
| always increase the quality level when encoding.
|
| So it's true in 2023 (especially since no one will stream
| that high of quality to you), but one can easily imagine
| boring incremental technology improvements that would
| demand more. There's plenty of room for video quality to
| increase before we reach the limitations of human eyes.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > 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.
| stephenr wrote:
| > 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.
|
| That's exactly the scenario I gave where 2.5G WAN would
| be useful, but a 1G LAN to each machine is likely enough
| _for most tasks, for most people_ - multiple users
| simultaneous use.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Back in college we had 100Mbit internet connections in
| our dorm rooms when most people had 10Mbit cable or DSL
| at most. At the time it was considered ridiculously fast
| and certainly not something an average consumer would
| ever need.
| organsnyder wrote:
| I just got 5gbps symmetrical FTTH installed. I'm in Michigan,
| so hardly some connectivity utopia. I'm going through a round
| of upgrading my network devices to be able to actually handle
| it.
| PinguTS wrote:
| You never visited Germany, aren't you?
| coldblues wrote:
| > very expensive 10g
|
| For me it's just 2EUR 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.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Can you say what country?
| nerdbert wrote:
| With Digi in Spain 10G is EUR5 more than 1G -
| https://www.digimobil.es/fibra-optica/
| Someone1234 wrote:
| 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.
| mmcnl wrote:
| Correction: you can usually run 10Gbit/s over CAT5e if the
| cables are not too long, so you probably won't need to
| replace your cables. But the hardware is indeed expensive.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| That isn't a correction, that is pedantry. Nobody is
| going to spend $100/month and thousands on equipment and
| then run their 10 Gbit/s network on 5e. The lengths to
| remain stable won't even bridge floors of a home let
| alone from end-to-end.
|
| If it was free in terms of equipment, you might have a
| point. Since then 10 GB is just a "bonus" but it isn't,
| or even close. So you'd be cheaping out on the final 10%
| of the cost.
| mmcnl wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean, good quality CAT5e cables
| should easily give you 10Gbit/s under 30m. If it works,
| why replace it?
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| > The lengths to remain stable won't even bridge floors
| of a home let alone from end-to-end.
|
| This isn't true. I've run 10gbit over cat5e many times in
| 10-30m lengths. That might not be enough for end to end
| on your house (although it is for many peoples), but it's
| certainly fine between floors.
|
| 10gbit switches are becoming significantly more common.
| Vendors like fs.com and even Netgear offer some
| reasonably priced options. Mikrotik and other vendors
| offer better (pricier) options, but assumedly if you want
| 10gbit (or even 1gbit) you're an enthusiast or business
| anyway.
| eddieroger wrote:
| I live in a house nearing 20 years old, and was incredibly
| pleased when I moved in and realized that all the phone jacks
| in this house were backed by CAT5, and if I was willing to
| invest the time (which I am), I could have at least one
| Ethernet jack in each room, and a pair channeled up to the
| attic as well. My only regret was they stripped way more than
| needed and didn't leave a lot of wire available, but enough
| that I could terminate and add a keystone jack that will last
| past my needs. Or so I thought until I learned that my ISP
| offers 2.5GBps to the house.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Implicit QoS - each device has a max 1GBps share of the
| 2.5GBps connection. Most hardware can't handle more anyways.
| redundantly wrote:
| > Implicit QoS
|
| Hahaha. Love it.
| mmcnl wrote:
| That's exactly how >1Gbit/s connections get sold. Hardware
| with multiple high-speed ports is very expensive, so
| typically you have 1 2.5G/10G port LAN port and all the
| other ports are 1G. So they say you can have multiple
| concurrent 1Gbit/s streams.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Most cat5e structured cabling is completely fine for home-
| length runs at 2.5 or 10 gigabit/s - I am using existing cables
| for the 10G run from my fiber drop to my router, and for the
| 2.5G runs from my router to my wireless access points.
| ivoc wrote:
| hah. Drilling holes to run Ethernet through centuries-old
| castle walls was my favorite.
| xattt wrote:
| My home was redone at some point in the late 1990s and I also
| lucked out in this regard with Cat 5 used for telephony, but
| easily converted to proper Ethernet.
|
| I ended up purchasing a "lifetime" spool of Cat 6 to fill in
| some blanks, but it's the optimal networking setup for me.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I like that it talks about coaxial cable. In case anyone is
| curious, like I was, twisted-pair cabling is used in practice
| because it's much cheaper and easier to work with than coax.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I think it's slightly more complex than that. There's a
| relationship between the cost and complexity of repeater
| technologies vs. the cost and complexity of the cabling and its
| necessary topology that really drove 10BaseT adoption.
| bluGill wrote:
| Coax is cheaper, or at least was when I used it in 1995.
| However since coax went from machine to machine it could be
| more expensive if the machines were not near each other. What
| killed coax was a problem anywhere took down everyone, and so
| there were too many problems.
| globular-toast wrote:
| You're talking about a different topology, though. Twisted-
| pair is cheaper per metre so allows you do to star topologies
| which work better. Especially so if you consider equivalent
| cables, so a hypothetical Cat6A equivalent coax vs Cat6A UTP
| or whatever.
| bluGill wrote:
| Coax per meter was cheaper than cat-3 twisted pair (Cat5
| existed but nobody was using it). That is before the star
| topology required a lot more meters of cable for twisted
| pair.
|
| Twisted pair was easier to work with than coax, and star
| topology avoided a lot of trouble with other topologies so
| it won out anyway, but it wasn't cheaper at first.
| baal80spam wrote:
| I really loved the "no bullshit" approach that Ethernet authors
| took, as described in the "Where Wizards Stay Up Late".
| WillAdams wrote:
| It still kills me that this name was used for a wired, rather
| than a wireless setup.
| dhc02 wrote:
| I think about this every single time I read or hear the word
| ether. "It means an invisible transfer medium. What were they
| thinking!?"
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| That's Aether.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Synonyms
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| So it is, I didn't know that. In that case the other
| poster point stands, I'm guessing they used the word to
| indicate the magic of the network?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| ...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.
| vore wrote:
| Tell that to the person who said "trie" should be
| pronounced "tree"!
| tokai wrote:
| They were thinking that they were making a new medium to
| propagate a signal. Wifi is not a medium but a protocol.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| 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.
| japanuspus wrote:
| The thing is that compared to Token Ring etc., Ethernet really
| is an "ether" where you just send your packets and hope that
| there is no collision. But yes.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Ethernet is a protocol, it has nothing to do with the cables.
| WiFi operates using a slight variant of the Ethernet frame
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| Ethernet is a family of standards which encompass physical
| wiring, connectors, electrical/optical signaling standards,
| and logical layer standards. It absolutely has to do with the
| cables as well as the signaling.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| > It reflected a comment Thacker had made early on, that
| "coaxial cable is nothing but captive ether," PARC researcher
| Alan Kay recalled.
|
| From the article on the origin of the name.
| dale_glass wrote:
| It's only a pity that things fossilized on 1500 byte packets.
|
| Yeah, we can compensate for that with hardware, but it's
| ridiculous to do 100G or even 10G in 1500 byte chunks.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yeah, what's with that? I looked into enabling jumbo frames on
| my home network (just for fun, I don't really need it) and it
| seemed horrendous as those packets could end up on the internet
| and probably wouldn't work.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Shouldn't the NAT take care of the outgoing frames as it is
| operating on the tcp/udp level?
| dale_glass wrote:
| No. NAT does Network Address Translation. It just changes
| addresses in packets. The packets are still whatever size
| they are.
|
| There's fragmentation, but that's separate from NAT and
| often broken.
| darkr wrote:
| Your local router, if correctly configured should do
| fragmentation. But in 95% of use cases, jumbo frames aren't
| worth the hassle.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Not for IPv6. And for IPv4, I believe few routers actually
| handle IP fragmentation properly or at all (which is why
| this was removed from IPv6).
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| This is what Path MTU Discovery is for, in principle, or what
| MSS clamping at your router will do.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Just to be picky the correct term is _data gram_ , which
| describes layer 2 segmentation. Packets describe segmentation
| between switches, which is layer 3.
| cduzz wrote:
| 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
| listening for a short period of time" mechanism.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| L3 switches are absolutely a thing, they allow
| communication between different VLANs on the same hardware
| without needing to go through a router.
| wolfendin wrote:
| A layer 3 switch is just a switch and a router in the
| same chassis.
|
| I have layer 3 switches doing eBGP.
| cduzz wrote:
| Well, the "OSI" model where there's a little disassembly
| and assembly line in your box, where each layer gets
| taken off by one robot and the payload of that inside
| package gets handed off to another concern -- all lies.
|
| The chips that do this (if they've got the features,
| anyhow) do L2, L3, L4, L5, etc all at the same time. So
| it's not an L2 switch _and_ L3 router -- it 's both at
| the same time, looking at the whole packet at once.
|
| But -- there is no such thing as an ethernet "router" --
| it's just a bridge with a forwarding table populated
| (usually) by listening for MAC addresses and updating
| forwarding tables. "flood and learn" There are even less
| ethernetty things out there that use the ethernet
| signaling but mechanically populate the forwarding tables
| of switches.
|
| But a "thing that forwards between vlans" usually means
| "a thing that forwards packets from one L3 subnet to
| another."
|
| You could probably make some insane custom switch that
| has routing rules for forwarding mac address packets from
| one vlan to another based on a bunch of zany rules, but
| such a cursed object would be hated universally by all
| who come after you.
| jandrese wrote:
| We used to joke that Cisco would sell you either a switch
| that could route or a router that switches also.
| monocasa wrote:
| > 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
| eqvinox wrote:
| If you want to be picky, you need to get it right first. The
| actual term is _frame_. _datagram_ is generally used to refer
| to layer 4 operation, and the term is not used anywhere in
| IEEE 802.3.
|
| Also the GP is correct to say we fossilized on 1500 byte
| packets, since the layer 3 MTU is the relevant thing when
| talking about fossilization in the internet at large. This
| number was driven by 802.3's standard frame size being 1514
| bytes, but that one is not even fossilized as much. It takes
| work, but you can control your own network and roll out jumbo
| frames. You can't roll out larger packets on the internet.
| ForkMeOnTinder wrote:
| > You can't roll out larger packets on the internet.
|
| Devil's advocate: why not? We're in the middle of a long-
| term push for IPv6, and we have interim solutions to help
| the migration like Teredo tunneling. It's slow going, but
| we'll get there eventually.
|
| Why don't we start a similar global migration to jumbo
| frames?
| ihattendorf wrote:
| What's the backwards compatibility story here? Send out
| dual 1500/9000 packets? I don't see how that would work
| for the billions of devices in the wild without replacing
| everything but maybe there's a better solution that
| doesn't take 30 years.
| uberduper wrote:
| pmtu
| ForkMeOnTinder wrote:
| IPv6 also required hardware in the wild to be replaced,
| but that's not a reason to give up and let things ossify.
| Over the next 30 years most hardware will be landfilled
| and replaced anyway. Let's get these improvements into
| the software stack of new devices now, and then let
| nature take its course.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| IPv6 has more pain (lack of IPv4 addresses) motivating
| it.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| If you want to be picky then it's actually Ethernet frame,
| which is neither a datagram nor a packet.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_frame
|
| Also, while we are being picky, datagram is one word not two.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Jumbo frames are a thing.
| eqvinox wrote:
| Jumbo frames are not a thing on the internet. The internet
| has fossilized at 1500 byte MTU.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Jumbo frames could be a thing on the internet if there was
| a meaningful value proposition. Jumbo frames get plenty of
| adoption in LAN environments.
| eqvinox wrote:
| > Jumbo frames could be a thing on the internet
|
| It being a thing on "the internet" would require it being
| a thing on a sizable majority of the internet. You'd need
| to get large network operators, peering points, user-
| facing ISPs, and even users themselves on board to change
| their setups.
|
| And Path MTU discovery is still sufficiently unreliable
| as to make it incredibly painful to have partial large-
| MTU networks.
|
| And if you do any of this with standard home customers, a
| hellscape torrent of user complaints is going to rain
| down on your support contacts. Which costs money. More
| money than is lost by the higher cost of routing smaller
| packets.
|
| So, no, jumbo frames could _not_ be a thing on the
| internet. There 's a reason it's called fossilization.
| There is no _technical_ reason precluding changing this,
| it 's just frozen into way too many places to be changed.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| This the same argument why IPv6 can't be a thing on the
| internet; I agree that the book isn't closed entirely on
| that yet, but very significant progress has been made.
| eqvinox wrote:
| Except disruptions (i.e. worse service than IPv4 only)
| from rolling out IPv6 are the exception while disruptions
| from rolling out jumbo frames are absolutely the norm.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| They seemed to have made it work side by side. I smiled
| when I pinged a cloud resource and got an IPv6 the other
| day.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > 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 sizes
| ranging from ~500 up to 2000 bytes. Again, hidden from you.
|
| One of the joys of TCP/IP is that different frame sizes are
| handled for you. Sure it might be beneficial to have a
| frame size that marries up with packet size, it might not.
| you don't really know, because the internets.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| ATM used 53-byte "cells".
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The bottom line is that if you ever send an IP frame
| larger than 1500 bytes outside of your own network, it's
| most likely that it will never reach its destination.
| Especially for IPv6.
| skullone wrote:
| I wouldn't call them "frame sizes" for ATM or DSL. It's a
| bit of a transparent fragmentation into "cells" onto the
| "transport" layer. It could carry arbitrary "frame" sizes
| on that
| aswanson wrote:
| Ill defined, but yes, definitely a thing.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I thought frame size negotiation was an optional part of
| LLDP now. I suspect it fits into the broad category of
| things that could be well-defined if there was broad
| adoption of a poorly adopted standard.
| kalleboo wrote:
| I've been terrified to enable jumbo frames because every
| guide I've read has always had "you have to make sure that
| every single machine you ever communicate with has to also
| have jumbo frames on or you will cause a black hole that
| sucks the whole earth into it!!" kind of disclaimers when I
| just want to lower the overhead in copying files from my NAS
| that has some pathetic Atom CPU in it.
| theblazehen wrote:
| If you're not blocking ICMP, then PMTUD will take care of
| any issues where other hosts don't support jumbo frames
| kalleboo wrote:
| 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.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Well, the _minimum_ MTU increased at least - it 's 1280
| bytes in IPv6 vs something ridiculous like 68 bytes in
| IPv4.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Never seen used in the practice though. One of problems AFAIK
| - most switch default to dropping jumbo frames. You can
| enable but if you'll left one unconfigured for some reason
| you will get hard to diagnose problem. The same with end
| hosts - they (inside a given L2 domain) should have the same
| MTU and if you'll left a box with the default MTU you got a
| problem.
|
| To make jumbo frames easier to use switches should forward
| them by default and hosts should accept frames large than MTA
| (but send MTU sized ones).
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Jumbo frames are used constantly in practice, just not
| often on the internet. They're common in all sorts of
| networks, especially enterprise and storage.
|
| If your switch is configured on defaults and not running a
| for purpose config, you probably don't need jumbo frames.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Intel needs to stop gouging customers for 10GBe NIC cards because
| they've got all the patents on the technology. Greed is _so_
| ugly.
| longtimelistnr wrote:
| what is the primary use you would have for them? do you have a
| 10GB connection? if so, very lucky
| Vecr wrote:
| Probably NAS transfers or similar.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I want a network with that much bandwidth but prices are
| astronomical.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Are you sure about those patents? Those would be expiring in a
| few short years anyway, 10 GbE is more than 20 years old and
| 10GBASE-T will be soon, too. Though 10GBASE-T just doesn't feel
| like a super-sensible PHY to me.
| smudgy wrote:
| I'd love to hear all the disruptive, trendy, innovative and
| blockchain-focused tech that'll cost me a fortune instead of
| relying on cheap ethernet.
|
| ^ The '/s' is implied.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I get you have beef with blockchain but it feels petty and
| intentionally detracting from the subject.
| kjs3 wrote:
| I get that you have a beef with an anti-blockchain heretics
| speaking blasphemy in the public square and are compelled by
| your religion to chastise them vigorously, but you aren't
| helping keep things on topic either.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| If you're interested in the early history of Ethernet, the Bob
| Metcalfe oral history from the Computer History Museum is a great
| read:
|
| https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Hist...
| jmathai wrote:
| 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 ran coax to nearly
| every room in the house - it's a bit ridiculous. And I learned
| that you can get up to 2.5gbps data transfer over coax using the
| MoCA standard.
|
| So now, I can run wired networking connections anywhere in the
| house for wired access points or connecting directly to
| computers, televisions, etc.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I do this too and it is terrific, literally indistinguishable
| from ethernet. What's amazing is you can run cable and MoCa on
| the same wire at the same time!
| teeray wrote:
| How does this work with both? Is there a defined band plan
| standard that cable operators know to avoid? Do you need to
| install a notch filter on the line coming into the house?
| coin wrote:
| MOCA modems looks for unused bandwidth
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I think it just sits in the mutli-ghz bands. It shouldn't
| conflict with cable, which uses lower frequency bands.
| You just gotta make sure to install a low pass filter at
| your demarcation point so you aren't broadcasting your
| MoCA stuff beyond your home.
|
| You also have to use appropriate splitters that are rated
| for the top ends of the spectrum.
| a-priori wrote:
| It's more the other way around. There's a defined band
| plan, because historically cable TV was just transmitting
| radio signals over coaxial cable instead of radio, so it
| inherited the broadcast TV band plan. Then digital TV
| inherited the analogue cable band plan and added higher-
| frequency channels.
|
| To answer your question, cable TV uses frequencies between
| about 55MHz to 1GHz, but mostly starting at about 500MHz
| for digital cable. So if I wanted to transmit Ethernet over
| cable, I'd use a 2GHz band or something to avoid
| interference.
| retrac wrote:
| > historically cable TV was just transmitting radio
| signals over coaxial cable instead of radio
|
| Well, to be pedantic, that is still how it works. And
| it's how cable Internet works. And it's also how a lot of
| techniques over twisted pair work, too.
|
| The conductor is used as a waveguide and a very-much-
| analogue signal encoding a digital signal is what is sent
| over the line. DOCSIS 3 uses up to QAM-4096, which can
| encode 12 bits in a single symbol on the line, by using
| multiple steps of amplitude shift and phase shift, to
| encode bits. Quite similar to how FM radio works, just
| digital steps, rather than an analogue continuum between
| 0 and 100 amplitude and 0 and 100 phase, at the decoder.
|
| This has even started showing up for links _within_ a
| single computer, now. The latest revision of PCIe uses
| modulated RF (4-level pulse amplitude modulation) rather
| than simple binary voltage levels.
| kube-system wrote:
| MoCa was designed specifically to work over existing coax
| used for TV and behave with existing signals. The board of
| the consortium that designed it includes Comcast, Cox, and
| Verizon. It was basically a solution for "we're gonna need
| internet in our customer's homes but we already ran coax in
| them"
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I should've done that instead of try and replace the coax with
| network cables; they all run through cable guides (yellow
| tubes), but they're probably bent, nicked and collapsed after
| installation so you can't just replace the cables through it.
| voxadam wrote:
| MoCA can be useful but doesn't it still encapsulate Ethernet at
| its lowest layer?
| mangeld wrote:
| If there's already a coax cable run what's stopping you from
| running an ethernet cable alongside it or replacing it?
| jakderrida wrote:
| Because he uses MoCa instead.
| Chabsff wrote:
| Coax runs in residential houses tend not to go through
| conduits, and often squeeze through holes in joists just
| barely big enough for the cable. Not to mention that, in my
| experience, they also tend to involve splitters in the
| absolute most random of locations.
|
| Running Ethernet alongside it is rarely any easier than
| fishing from scratch.
| ellisv wrote:
| I haven't run Ethernet, but if I do the drops will be very
| near the coaxial cables because they're an easy reference.
| tetris11 wrote:
| If the endpoints have a hidden fork in between, then what you
| are shovelling in on one end might not be what comes out the
| other.
| massysett wrote:
| Laziness. I'd much rather spend $100 on gizmos than spend
| hours on a home improvement project. And these projects are
| never as simple as they at first promise to be.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I have the exact situation. Like 8 coax lines in the home but
| no Ethernet. Can someone point me in a consumer-ready
| direction? I imagine I can do this:
|
| - put cable modem in basement where line comes in.
|
| - do something that goes from router to into 2-3 coax lines
| heading into the home.
|
| - have some little box in those rooms that expose an Ethernet
| port.
| zylent wrote:
| I've used this model for a few networks and had a good time.
| Minimal setup and supports a WPS-like security.
|
| https://a.co/d/4aC81NS
|
| See the diagram in this guide:
| https://www.motorolacable.com/documents/MM1025-QuickStart-
| re...
|
| Note both the usage of the PoE (point of entry, not power)
| filter, as well as the MoCA network encapsulating both DOCSIS
| and Ethernet traffic.
|
| Some set-top boxes and modems are MoCA compatible, but I
| prefer using a discrete unit.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Oh wow I don't even need to isolate my incoming cable
| Internet from it.
|
| Thank you for these links. This is exactly what I needed to
| move forward.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Oh, so you can connect several devices to the same "shared"
| coax cable around the house?
|
| How is it? Is it really 2.5gbps or is it like Powerline
| adaptors that are an order of magnitude slower than their
| advertised speed? :P
| judge2020 wrote:
| I was able to hit >2gbps in speed tests using goCoax MoCA
| adapters when I used them, but it isn't "full duplex", so you
| won't see 2.5 down and up at the same time, for example.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| I'm using MoCA to connect two parts of my house that I have
| not been able to pull CAT5 too.
|
| There is a latency hit when using MoCA compared to Ethernet:
|
| MoCA: 192.168.0.1 : xmt/rcv/%loss = 10/10/0%, min/avg/max =
| 3.24/4.02/4.64
|
| Ethernet: 192.168.0.1 : xmt/rcv/%loss = 10/10/0%, min/avg/max
| = 0.365/0.461/0.515
| ellisv wrote:
| Yes. My setup is like this:
|
| Fiber ONT/Modem -> Access Point -> MoCA adapter 1 -> Coax
| Splitter
|
| Coax Splitter -> MoCA adapter 2 -> Switch -> bunch of devices
|
| Coax Splitter -> MoCA adapter 3 -> Switch -> Access Point +
| bunch of devices
|
| Coax Splitter -> MoCA adapter 4 -> Access Point
|
| the MoCA adapters actually report 3Gbps+ between each other,
| but my access points only have gigabit Ethernet so that's my
| bottleneck.
|
| There are different standards of coaxial cable (RG-6, RG-59,
| etc). If you see low speeds with MoCA, it is probably a cable
| problem and not an adapter problem.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I can pull down a gig/sec no problem. Dunno how well it
| handles congestion or anything but it is way more than
| adequate for home use.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| MoCa is just a standard to run the Ethernet network over Coax
| cables
|
| Nobody runs the Ethernet cables from 50 years ago, we use
| modern standards to run the Ethernet network over modern
| cables. Typically the 'UTP' cables but not necessarily.
| roessland wrote:
| Cool! I have the same issue with unused coax cables between
| every room, and was planning on replacing them with ethernet
| cables. In my case it's feasible without breaking down any
| walls. Does this work even with splitters?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Yes, it works with splitters. Just be careful because you'll
| lose signal strength on each split, your splitter should have
| a number on it for how much is lost.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Make sure your splitter is rated for like 1.8ghz so you don't
| dramatically attenuate your signal. Cheap splitters will
| probably cause trouble.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| 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...
| velcrovan wrote:
| The few times I have run into these, the actual performance
| is terrible. Wifi is almost always better.
| LeanderK wrote:
| it's been 10 years but I had great success running internet
| into the basement this way. Wifi was terrible down there
| (router was in the upper floor) and there wasn't an
| existing ethernet cable going down. Of course it wasn't
| perfect but it was trivial to set up and worked.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Same for me, my parents house had no WiFi signal
| downstairs or Ethernet in the walls. A powerline wifi
| extender kit worked out of the box and is fast enough for
| their needs.
| markofzen wrote:
| I had a similar issue until I limited the amount of wire
| between the connections. For example I put one right by an
| outlet under my breaker box, then another in my garage
| right where the subpanel is and it improved dramatically.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Mine is, in theory, 2Gb/s. In practise, nearer 50Mb/s.
|
| It also causes interference on my amplifier, although it's
| a cheap amplifier.
|
| About once a year one of the adaptors loses its connection
| to the other adaptor, and instead connects to someone
| else's setup in this apartment building.
| tiberious726 wrote:
| 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.
| freedomben wrote:
| 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!
| Symbiote wrote:
| 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...
| orev wrote:
| How does interference caused by the radio waves have
| anything to do with using encryption?
| freedomben wrote:
| Same. It was great 10 years ago, but wifi speeds at this
| point make the wired through electric lines painfully slow.
| Even with the occasional wifi hiccup, wifi is almost always
| better.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| 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.
| david422 wrote:
| I tried this. It kinda worked. It also apparently leaks a lot
| of ... data? Interference? Something. Wifi seems to work just
| as well for us.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| If your neighbors use it too, you could end up on each
| other's network
| HungSu wrote:
| ServeTheHome just published an article about powerline
| networking
|
| TLDR: It's still bad.
|
| https://www.servethehome.com/over-a-decade-later-
| powerline-a...
| bpye wrote:
| When I was a uni student in an old house with thick walls
| these were worth it. My bedroom had terrible WiFi - power
| line networking got me a few hundred mbps but the latency
| suffered.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I never had good luck with that. Even on the same circuit, as
| instructed. The performance and reliability is really quite
| bad.
| tzs wrote:
| > 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 before 1995 you'd
| be looking at CAT4 and under 20 Mb/s.
|
| I've got an ethernet cable running between the two rooms that
| are farthest apart in my house, but it is kind of ugly. I just
| screwed in cup hooks or nailed in nails at an angle on the
| walls up near the ceiling and draped the cable over them.
|
| The right way would be to run it through the crawlspace or
| attic. I don't want to crawl around in the crawlspace, and my
| attic is the kind that if you aren't very careful you can put a
| foot through the ceiling of the room below, and has a bunch of
| blown in insulation that would probably make it even harder to
| get around so I don't want to try that.
|
| I've wondered if I could run cable through the attic without
| actually going into the attic. Open the top of a wall below and
| drill up into the attic. Attach the cable to a pole and use
| that to push it up into the attic several feet, with the end of
| the cable tied into a loop.
|
| Then send a drone into the attic, fly it to the pole, hook the
| loop, detach the cable from the pole, and fly the end of the
| cable over to the attic access hatch.
|
| Then do the same with a cable at the other end. Splice the two
| ends together.
|
| Is that reasonable feasible or is it just crazy?
| graphe wrote:
| 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.
| pzmarzly wrote:
| In that's your usecase, it's better to save yourself the
| hassle and just set up good WiFi
| toast0 wrote:
| 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 you're
| looking at maybe a daisy chain of switches running at 10m.
| That said, cabling is often better than the spec it was
| tested to, and ethernet cable requirements are for long
| runs in dense conduit; it's worth trying 100M on old
| telephone wiring if it's already in the wall to see what
| you can get.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| 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.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| 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".
| tharkun__ wrote:
| 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.
| ska wrote:
| > No patience.
|
| Or maybe they want to stream UHD content?
| graphe wrote:
| 20Mb/s isn't 20mbps.
| bpye wrote:
| That's exactly what it is. 20MB/s isn't 20mbps, it would
| be 160mbps.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| 20Mb/s is twenty megabit per second. Twenty megabyte per
| second is 20MB/s notice that the b must be capitalized
| for byte instead of bit.
| Shaanie wrote:
| 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.
| eimrine wrote:
| Doesn't a modern Wi-fi still has worse ping than CAT4
| cable?
| graphe wrote:
| He said hard to reach places. If an old house has CAT4 in
| the basement, I'll take the lower pings, reliability, and
| at worst I'll WebDAV. Unless your home server is in the
| basement I can't see a normal realistic scenario where
| the data transfer isn't sufficient.
| babypuncher wrote:
| 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.
| graphe wrote:
| Streaming 20mb/s is more than sufficient for video. I
| don't transfer 60gb blurays daily so it doesn't matter to
| me.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| 1. It's not enough when you're on an active connection
| doing other things at the same time as the video. Live
| streams at full quality will use a third to half of
| 20Mbps and demand _very_ little interruption. Loading a
| single page with a few images can interfere. And even
| dedicated 20Mbps, with tightly encoded content, can be
| too little for 4k.
|
| 2. The idea in the comment is _streaming_ at original
| bluray quality. Not transferring.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Maybe 720P, but I've got 4k Blu ray movies that have
| peaks of over 200Mb/s when streaming and my device always
| stutters over those sections.
| babypuncher wrote:
| 20mb/s is not sufficient for 4k video unless it has been
| bitcrushed to death. And even then, you are assuming a
| given network only has a single user.
|
| Also, I stream actual blu-ray rips over my network all
| the time, not just transferring them.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > Streaming 20mb/s is more than sufficient for video.
|
| On a 120" display?
| noir_lord wrote:
| Can't tell if serious or not so bravo.
|
| On the assumption you are, just climb in the loft and drag
| the cable over, it's not that bad, I've been in and out of
| lofts since my early teens doing house re-wires with my
| father and _never_ put my foot through a ceiling.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| 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.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Mask, Gloves and a Long Sleeved shirt and it's all good.
|
| Some of the old insulation will make you itchy as hell
| and probably not something you want to breathe but
| otherwise yeah, it's just a chore its not difficult
| assuming you are able bodied (I'm UK so our houses (until
| recently) had heavy duty joists so you can just clamber
| around on them, if gonna me up a while take a board up
| and lay it over a few to kneel/lay on and that's about
| it.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I've always wondered if that's the old glass insulation
| itself, or the accumulated mouse-poop-dust embedding
| itself in the microscratches and freaking out your immune
| system.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| 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 something stable before fully transferring your weight
| - Mind your head. The roof plywood will likely have
| roofing nails sticking through - Bring 2 lights,
| preferably one lantern-type. That way you can leave one
| en route
|
| If it's blown insulation, you can sweep it over and
| expose joists to stand on.
|
| They're regularly spaced from the exterior wall to an
| interior beam, all running the same direction, and the
| support boards up to the roof will run down to one.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| 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.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| That's a damn good idea.
|
| I wired a string of LED lights for a friend (with
| outlets), but I figured the electronics in them would
| eventually fry.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if attics in the southeast get up
| to 140F in the summer.
|
| Rope lighting would be cheap and semi-insulated.
| fragmede wrote:
| it's not that hard to only step on the joists in the attic,
| if it was built to code. if you don't want to crawl in the
| crawlspace, pay someone else to do it for you.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| My most interesting ethernet run:
|
| My office is in the basement corner with the sump pump, and
| said pump is located inside an undersized closet along with
| some pipework for the furnace, and all that like I said is in
| the very most corner space of the basement, basically inside
| a drywall box about 3 feet square. All things considered, it
| looks pretty nice. However I wanted ethernet back here for
| obvious reasons, and for several other reasons relating to
| layout, using either of the basement-facing walls wouldn't
| work.
|
| SO: I realized that to run the plumbing and such from the
| furnace and utility area to this corner, they left a cavity a
| few inches tall in the ceiling at the outside-facing wall to
| this little cabinet. I bought a piece of 10-foot PVC pipe an
| inch wide, and slid it into this cavity between the existing
| pipes, securing it in place with a little bracket and some
| junk screws. Then I shoved four ethernet cables through that,
| into this little closet, and installed an ethernet wall plate
| in the door since it isn't regularly used and hooked it up
| there with enough slack that the door can move easily when we
| need to have any mechanicals serviced in there.
|
| It's worked perfectly for the last 5 years. Love it.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| tzs wrote:
| > 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 because I lack the skills
| or I'd need to buy some equipment I don't have and would
| not get enough future use out of to justify the cost, but I
| also didn't want to pay for the minimum of 30 minutes or 1
| hour of labor that many contractors and companies charge.
|
| A good example is that there was a security light mounted
| on a pole on top of my garage. I wanted to remove the bulb,
| but it was screwed in tight enough that using one of those
| light bulb removers on a pole I could not get it to budge.
| I'm not agile enough to be willing to try to climb onto my
| garage roof.
|
| The idea is that I'd list this task on the app, with how
| much I'd pay (probably $20 cash) and my neighborhood. Then
| handymen, roofers, electricians, etc., could check the app
| or site when they are out on a job site and it would show
| them such tasks that are near them.
|
| So say some roofers are doing something for a neighbor.
| They could check the app, see that it's a quick $20 cash
| for one of them on their way home or on their lunch break
| to come over and spend a minute or two doing my task. I was
| in no hurry to remove the light bulb, so I would have no
| problem waiting until someone with a ladder and a few
| minutes to spare happened to be working in the area and be
| willing to make a quick easy $20.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| 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.
| dataflow wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I think you missed important details in their post:
|
| >> tasks I wanted done that would only take someone with
| the right skills and equipment _a few minutes_
|
| >> tasks that _are near them_
|
| The idea is, you're someone handy with equipment, and
| someone down the block wants lights installed. So you
| walk there with a couple tools on your hand, spend 5
| minutes doing it, and earn (say) $20. Instead of just
| sitting at home and watching TV when you're bored. If you
| don't feel like it then you just don't take the offer up.
|
| This is not meant to be an alternative to your day job.
| It's just intended to be something extra you can do when
| you're home anyway. If transportation and fuel and other
| costs would factor in then you just wouldn't do it.
|
| It's in no way insulting, it's an opportunity for anyone
| that wants it. I'm not a handyman but I'd definitely do
| this from time to time if (say) my neighbors needed
| computer or coding help for a few minutes.
| applied_heat wrote:
| You shouldn't do electrical work on someone else's house.
| If it burns down and electrical is the cause as an
| unlicensed uninsured electrician you are going to regret
| that $20 you made.
|
| Coding a web page for a neighbour is different since
| there are often no ramifications in the physical world if
| it doesn't load or look exactly as desired
| dataflow wrote:
| I'm not claiming it's a good idea for electrical work.
| I'm just replying to the points in the comment saying
| it's an insulting wage.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Let's extend the idea to unlicensed dentistry too. For
| $20 I'll remove your tooth with a pair of pliers. It'll
| take less than 5 minutes.
| dataflow wrote:
| Isn't that a felony?
| nocoiner wrote:
| Gosh, I cannot imagine what would be unappealing about
| the opportunity for a tradesman to devalue the price of
| their labor and experience the small-but-inherent risk of
| catastrophic injury any time a ladder is involved in
| exchange for the chance to pick up a spare tenner...
|
| (Beyond that, even if they're already in the area, by the
| time they pull up the truck, load and unload the ladder
| and actually do the job, the per-minute rate is probably
| already a fair bit worse than what they would earn from
| real customers - it may seem to you like you're offering
| an easy job at $10/minute, but it's probably a tenth of
| that all in from their perspective.)
| walteweiss wrote:
| Haha, I had the very same idea when I needed a similar
| job to be done. There are many concerns though, as quick
| $20 could become an evening job (i.e. 3 hours instead of
| 5 minutes), as some extra info may arise, and you being
| not qualified enough may think is 'quick and easy.'
|
| Although in an ideal scenario that's a really great idea,
| as quite many people (I believe) may be in need of such
| services.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Isn't this just taskrabbit?
| ska wrote:
| 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.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The problem is that work involves job acquisition,
| analysis, communication, travel and of course risk to
| self and risk to property. It's also not repeatable so
| its basically impossible to earn a living 20 here and
| there.
|
| It's probably not worth it for anyone you might actually
| want to hire and doubly so for anything to which
| substantial chance of liability attaches. It might make
| more sense as a list of things your
| friends/neighbors/family could use help with playing up
| altruism angle and minimizing emphasise on liability. You
| know more like neighbor helping neighbor. You could also
| hopefully integrate positive things like sharing things
| that may still have value eg you upgraded your washing
| and dryer but the old set are still workable or things to
| do that others might want to share in so its not all a
| distributed version of your grandma's chore list.
|
| Incidentally a have a great domain used for a fairly
| half-assed implementation of a not entirely different
| idea.
| burntalmonds wrote:
| 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.
| hamburglar wrote:
| 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 still take up one tile at a time if you need to
| get access to something like the top side of a ceiling
| light fixture.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| If you ask nicely and go at a not-busy time, larger home
| improvement stores will generally cut them for you there.
| projektfu wrote:
| Crawlspace is better. You just make your access and then you
| can drill down with a flexible bit. Pass the cable down, some
| twine on the other side, then you only have one quick crawl
| to pull the cable and maybe put up some cable staples to keep
| it out of the way. In the attic you have to fish the cable
| all the way down, makes it harder.
| antonjs wrote:
| Fish tape and a cheap endoscope are the tools you want.
| myself248 wrote:
| 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!)
| chadcatlett wrote:
| RC vehicles, balls with an eye bolt & string w/ a sling
| shot, and fish tape/poles were key things for the miles and
| miles of network cable I ran in a previous life.
|
| To add on to the pull string.. if there is a remote chance
| you have to run a cable the same direction again in the
| future, try to leave a pull string in place when you pull
| all the cables initially.
| aksss wrote:
| > flopped along the ceiling grid wasn't professional
|
| In a commercial setting at least, it's not up to code, let
| alone standards of good workmanship.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| This splice is the only issue, really.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| 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."
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Finding a competent electrician these days, for a
| residential job, can be the difficult part.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I work with several low-voltage guys on different jobs,
| both new development and retrofit. It is exceedingly
| difficult to find good cable guys. Running parallel to
| romex, staples through the middle of the cable, minimum
| radius as a non-existent concept... Like you say, the
| competency is the hard part to find.
|
| And before anyone adds on with 'lol pay more', they try.
| The people just aren't there.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Almost all homeowners can't pay more than commercial jobs
| (for the same amount of billable work).
|
| Ergo, if they can, tradespeople take commercial jobs.
|
| Which leaves residential tradesperson as something of a
| lemon market. (And _I_ wouldn 't want to put up with one-
| off job, haggling about payment, if I had commercial
| options)
| ryandrake wrote:
| You should not be surprised. A lot of us are DIYers, and
| see no need to pay someone to do something we can do
| ourselves. Running low-voltage ethernet through an attic or
| crawlspace is within the skills of anyone with functioning
| limbs. There is zero reason to pay someone to do it.
|
| I don't really understand people who pay others to do every
| little thing they need done around the house, but I suppose
| they have different values than I so live and let live...
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| > Running low-voltage ethernet through an attic or
| crawlspace is within the skills of anyone with
| functioning limbs.
|
| Except the whole point of his post was that he didn't
| know how to do it competently, there's no way he wants to
| enter the crawlspace, so has resorted to wacky
| workarounds.
|
| So, no, it clearly isn't within the skill (or desire) of
| anyone, but many would rather resort to hackery and
| hubris rather than pay someone to do it correctly.
|
| I'll counter that and say there's probably minimum wage
| coders in India who write equal or better code than you
| at 1/10th of the pay, certainly possible as they have two
| functioning hands.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Well... I retrofitted a whole UK house with Cat6A, about
| 20 runs, longest run about 25m. The walls were dot and
| dab construction so quite a bit harder than drywall, but
| a lot easier than solid. I had my electrician brother to
| help for a weekend to do the cable runs. It was an entire
| two solid days of work just to do the runs, and this is
| with someone with the right tools and experience plus me
| having already planned it carefully. It would have taken
| me a week to do it alone. After that it was a full week
| of evenings terminating everything at both ends and
| another couple of weekends filling a repairing the walls.
| Definitely not for the faint hearted!
|
| Worth it, though, and would do it again.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Careful with electricians and data cabling. Here's why: htt
| ps://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/tzh00l/dais..
| .
|
| A place I used to live had structured cabling built in and
| half of it was CCA. I could tell immediately when I cut the
| cable to terminate it just by seeing the silver ends. It
| even said CCA on the casing so wasn't even fake.
|
| Electricians are definitely better than you at running
| cable and knowing where to cut the holes. But make sure you
| choose the cable and terminate it yourself.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Believe it or not, many of us _don 't_ make huge sums of
| money.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| >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."
|
| You'd have to pay me that kind of money (amortized) to deal
| with vetting/hiring/managing/scheduling/QC'ing someone else
| and their work.
| js2 wrote:
| > 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 before 1995 you'd be looking at CAT4 and
| under 20 Mb/s.
|
| I've been dealing with twisted pair cable since the mid-90s
| and I've never seen Cat 4 cable anywhere, commercial or
| residential.
|
| Cat 5/5e both support GigE. The primary difference between FE
| and GE with respect to cabling is that GE uses all 4 pairs
| where FE used only 2 pairs. The difference between 5 and 5e
| cable is pretty negligible, and the GigE standard only
| requires Cat 5, not 5e
|
| With respect to Cat 4, you're confusing the signal bandwidth
| and data rate. Cat 4 supports up to 20 Mhz signal bandwidth.
| It can be utilized by either 10BASE-T (10 Mbit/s) or
| 100BASE-T4 (100 Mbit/s).
|
| If there's twisted pair data cabling in the home at all, it's
| probably suitable for GigE. Otherwise it's likely RJ11 phone
| cabling that's not typically going to be in a home run
| topology.
|
| That said, the standards are pretty forgiving over shorter
| distances. Here's someone claiming they got GigE speeds over
| Cat 3 cabling in an older home:
|
| https://superuser.com/a/1281656
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| I thought gigabit required all four pairs, or am I missing
| part of what you said?
| anamexis wrote:
| They said exactly that.
| kvmet wrote:
| For typical Ethernet sure. Although there are newer
| standards that can use a single pair (1000Base-T1). They
| are very range-limited though and not what you would
| normally install in your house.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet#1000BASE-T
| 1
| signatureMove wrote:
| IMO sounds crazy. Can't you just step on the wooden frame
| instead of the space between them?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Reading you both...
|
| I am 45. Last year, before I moved to a new house, I decided
| to run CAT8 Ethernet everywhere. Some people told me that
| they consider this excessive, but compared to the cost of the
| house, the extra cost was negligible and I hope this network
| will do well into the 2050s.
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| Definitely a great move and idea. One thing people
| frequently overlook when buying higher end CAT x copper
| cable is the thicker the cable the more difficult (some
| cases impossible) to attach an RJ45 head/plug or Keystone
| type connector. Additionally, it can become much more
| difficult to flex/bend, especially if considering it in an
| electrical gang box for a face plate. This is why
| frequently you'll see "cat 8" bulk cable for not much more
| than cat 6E bulk cable.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Are the two rooms on the same breaker/fuse (by some chance)?
| Another solution is ethernet-over-powerline where the data
| rides on your AC powerlines and is decoded at each end by an
| adapter. Supposedly they can get to the mid-hundreds of mbps,
| but only if they're on the same breaker. I used one in a
| rube-goldberg (Neighbor's WiFi)->(My Raspberry Pi, NAT
| Router)->(Ethernet-over-powerline)->(My WiFi Router) about 8
| years ago, but the EoP was only good for a couple mbps
| because the signal had to go through the breaker. It was fine
| for poor-man's internet though.
| bombela wrote:
| 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.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| >Then send a drone into the attic, fly it to the pole
|
| I did some interior inspection with my Mini 2 in an area that
| was too small for me to crawl to.
|
| I did get it to work, but it was a close thing. Air currents
| in tightly enclosed spaces do not play nicely with drone
| stability algorithms.
|
| Also, if you have blown-in insulation, it will fly up and get
| stuck in your motors in a matter of seconds to minutes unless
| you can keep a ~6' standoff. FWIW.
| saalweachter wrote:
| If you're ever in the situation where you have your walls
| open and you want to install data cables, do yourself a favor
| and go nuts with some Smurf tubes. (ENT boxes and tubes.)
|
| Run them all over the damn places, anywhere you might want
| Ethernet or coax or HDMI or whatever is big ten years from
| now. You don't even need to pull the Ethernet now; just put
| blank covers on the boxes you don't need.
|
| Once you have the tubes in all your walls, future cable pulls
| become a snap; you don't even need fish tape half the time,
| you can just push Ethernet in one side and have it pop out
| the other.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Can confirm.
|
| Coax cabling in North American homes is really common. It was
| intended for running cable TV from your cable boxes to other
| rooms. Ethernet is rare. My current place also has coax
| everywhere. Like you, I use this for wired networking.
|
| So the only thing I'll add is if you do run cable TV over coax
| in your house you'll need to use MoCa splitters if you want to
| run wired networking too. Splitters are cheap. You can buy them
| on Amazon. If you don't run cable TV you don't need splitters.
|
| I would also advise you pay about $40 for a test kit to test
| your cable. I also needed this to find out where cables
| terminated to a central repeater.
|
| I don't know what speeed I could get but I have nothing about
| gigabit ethernet and it runs to that speed (~930Mbps) just
| fine.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Also, check the phone lines. If it's recent enough build, it
| will use Cat5 (or higher, but probably not) for the phone
| lines.
| hackmiester wrote:
| Even if not... I've managed to link at Gigabit over category
| 3 cable of a short distance.
| teeray wrote:
| One issue with that is that electricians can sometimes be
| brutal on Cat5 used as a phone line. I've had drops that were
| basically unusable as ethernet because some of the pairs were
| damaged, even though the phone pair in use was fine.
| tyrfing wrote:
| Even MUCH older phone lines can push gigabit with G.fast, I
| have gigabit fiber internet in early 1980s construction that
| way.
| kjs3 wrote:
| You can get ethernet to coax baluns and get 100Mbps and PoE.
| They're extremely reliable, passive (so little to break) and
| cheap. There might be gig versions now. They're used to
| retrofit older surveillance camera wiring plants to ethernet
| without ripping out all the cables, but don't really care what
| type of ethernet device is on each end.
|
| If all you have is old phone wires in the wall, you can get a
| pair of xDSL (HVDSL) modems back to back and get up to 10Mbps
| or so. Better than nothing.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I actually couldn't get ethernet at fast enough speeds compared
| to wifi over the last couple years
|
| with wifi over 1gbps and Ethernet stuck at 100mb/s or a single
| port of 1gbps or a single one that's faster and none of my
| devices having that port or the cat5e wires being questionable
|
| what time span were you talking about? Was this decades ago?
| tingletech wrote:
| 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.
| michaelt wrote:
| 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.
| FFP999 wrote:
| And if a single vampire tap comes loose, the entire network
| segment goes down. Don't miss that.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| And 10BaseT!
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair)
|
| Anybody else remember "vampire connections"?
|
| [Ah, a minute late. FFP999 remembers them.]
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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.
| FFP999 wrote:
| > Despite this it felt speedy!!
|
| When the most common data transfer technology is a POTS
| modem that can do 56kb/second...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Think more like 2400 or 9600 bps actually :)
| FFP999 wrote:
| True--I was talking more towards the end of the use of
| coax for Ethernet, which was also the peak of the dialup
| days.
| FFP999 wrote:
| You remember correctly. This was the most common form of
| Ethernet cable when I was first starting out roughly 3,000
| years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2
| hnarn wrote:
| > 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 alternative is setting up an entire switching set up for
| moving ethernet over coax.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| 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.
| massysett wrote:
| 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.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| I develop software for a living, my capabilities at layer
| 1 are quite limited.
|
| Also my wife would _not_ go for visible Ethernet run like
| that. I 'd have to hire a contractor to do drywall work
| to have it done right.
|
| I have managed to get Ethernet everywhere I want for the
| most part though, thanks to a luckily positioned
| unfinished half of the basement and garage, where visible
| cables are fine and I can just pop through walls here and
| there.
| trapexit wrote:
| In American homes, cables are typically stapled to the wood
| frame construction, not run in conduit. You have to cut open
| the finished wall surface to change them.
| elevation wrote:
| What hardware adapters are you using?
| ellisv wrote:
| I use goCoax adapters and recommend them. I haven't tried any
| other manufacturers.
|
| https://www.gocoax.com
| mmcnl wrote:
| MoCA is great but the downside is that requires two active
| components. And leveraging PoE becomes impossible.
|
| Also, why not replace the coax cable with UTP? Tape some fish
| tape to your coax cable, and gently pull the coax cable on the
| other end. Then ape some UTP to the other end of the fish tape
| and pull again slowly. Pretty easy actually.
| xxpor wrote:
| Cable that was installed when the house was built is usually
| stapled to the studs, making it close to impossible to simply
| pull out unfortunately.
| mmcnl wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this type of construction. Where I
| live any wiring is run through pipes.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| True but if you don't care about another power brick on both
| ends... it's a quick, dirty, fast and effective way to bring
| wired Ethernet to every room with a cable jack.
| Spivak wrote:
| Am I missing something? Given most residential equipment tops
| out at 1G isn't coax better than if ethernet had been ran?
| bpye wrote:
| I have 10Gbps between my home server and desktop. Is it
| overkill? Sure, but I do use my home server for networked
| storage in Lightroom etc so having it be even slightly faster
| is nice.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| MoCA really doesn't get the attention it deserves. Everybody
| always thinks if WiFi repeaters, or Ethernet over power line
| but MoCA is much faster and more reliable than either of them!
|
| It's perfect for apartments that have cabletv jacks in every
| room. Just make sure you are using the appropriate wideband
| splitters and have a filter at the cable demarcation in your
| dwelling.
| appplication wrote:
| The problem I've found with moca is that every time I've
| tried it (3x now), there's always _something_ going on behind
| the walls that ends up completely ruining it. Someone put
| filters or splitters in, or something to that extent, and it
| turns out there's insane packet loss or sub MB speed or it
| just doesn't work for some reason.
| charlie0 wrote:
| MoCA is really expensive. You're better off just hiring
| someone to wire the house up. Id
| eikenberry wrote:
| How cheap are electricians where you live? MoCA adapters
| are around $50/each where electricians are around $200 just
| to visit + hourly and materials (US, west coast). That's a
| lot of MoCA devices.
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| I've been happily using the laughably cheap Direct-TV Deca
| adapters for years now to get 100Mbps ethernet to my detached
| garage (where of course the previous owners needed coax TV
| :P), for my smart garage door, wyze cam, and streaming music
| while mowing. Works like a charm for $20!
| brazzledazzle wrote:
| If you're willing to put the work in you can use the coax drops
| and runs as pulling line for cat, new coax (if you want to keep
| it) and real pulling line (to leave tied at the top and bottom
| of each drop if you ever need to run something else). Same idea
| if you have POTS copper run throughout. Most of the time even
| the ancient drops and runs have enough space cut out for a
| number of cables since doing runs is generally easier when the
| holes are larger.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Maybe for plasterboard and timber construction. My house is
| mostly brick with the coax chased into the wall.
| brazzledazzle wrote:
| Ah, yeah my advice is definitely for sheet rock/dry wall
| based dwellings. I think you could manage to replace the
| coax run through brick with a single cat run though. I
| would buy and generously use wire pulling lubricant though.
| IshKebab wrote:
| The cables don't go through the brick; they're under
| plaster. No way are you removing that without destroying
| the plaster.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| 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.
| toyg wrote:
| I just replaced the coax cables. It's actually really easy to
| rewire: attach old and new cable together, and pull.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That only works when the coax was a retrofit itself, and the
| house is small. If it was installed when the house was built,
| it'll be stapled in various places.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I just had a house built. I am 99% sure looking at all the
| pics I took it is not stapled in. The tricky ones are the
| ones where they decided to drill a hole thru the 2x4s in
| the wall about every 4 ft... Now I am not saying they do
| not do that (different areas have different ideas of what
| is 'right').
| ellisv wrote:
| My cables are all stapled to the studs, so pulling doesn't
| work that well :(
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I agree with this. I finally bit the bullet and bought a bunch
| of MoCA adapters for my house. In practice I don't get the full
| 2.5 gigabit speed, but I do get about 1.7. Good 'nuf for my
| needs, for sure.
| graywh wrote:
| I'm still using the coax for my OTA antenna
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Ethernet forever.
|
| It feels like the only thing in this godforsaken industry that is
| anywhere near "it just works."
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I live in a world where my 1989 Macintosh SE can talk to my
| 2020 Raspberry Pi. It's not all bad =)
| nerdbert wrote:
| That's nothing - I've talked to people from the 1910s. Let me
| know when computers get that flexible!
| NortySpock wrote:
| Recent friendly wholesome interview with Metcalf , where Metcalf
| says he is getting into the weeds of geothermal energy
| production.
|
| He also says the reason Ethernet keeps getting better is because
| they keep rebranding new, novel signalling and encoding schemes
| as Certified Ethernet. It sounded like he had a grin on his face
| when he said it.
|
| https://hanselminutes.com/900/from-ethernet-to-geothermal-en...
| taneq wrote:
| Didn't Cringley say back in Accidental Empires that no matter
| what actual tech was involved, you could guarantee that in X
| years whatever we use for wired networking would be called
| Ethernet? :)
| smartmic wrote:
| As much as I admire the performance of ethernet in the
| hardware/infrastructure sector, it is all the more impressive
| when software remains stable for such a long time. And there are
| also good examples with lifetimes of 40 to 50 years. If i were to
| mention just a few prominent examples that are in my head, I
| would be doing injustice to all the others that have not been
| mentioned, so I'll leave it at that.
|
| What I would like to say, however, is that in an industry as
| young as IT, it is hard to overestimate when technologies have
| proven themselves over decades. All the "latest hot sh*t"
| ideas/technologies/brainwaves/products first have to stand the
| test of time (no, 2.5 years is not enough) to be taken seriously
| without any doubt.
| alberth wrote:
| Never underestimate the power of cheap, "good enough" and
| backward compatibility.
|
| https://assets.fixr.com/cost_guides/hardwired-computer-netwo...
| therealmarv wrote:
| 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)
| organsnyder wrote:
| 2.5 Gbps is pretty common.
| mmcnl wrote:
| Then please find me a 2.5G 8-port switch with PoE for $100?
| organsnyder wrote:
| I didn't say it was cheap.
| ooterness wrote:
| "B" = Byte
|
| "b" = bit
|
| The ubiquitous 1000BASE-T form of Ethernet transmits 1 gigabit
| per second (1 Gb/s).
| therealmarv wrote:
| yes, you are right
| nerdbert wrote:
| 2.5Gbps seems to have become the new reasonably-affordable
| thing.
| breadwinner wrote:
| 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%...
| stewx wrote:
| Wow, a truly rare instance of literally eating your words!
| manual89 wrote:
| McAfee can't hold a candle to this man.
| Koshkin wrote:
| This is one of the rare examples when the word "literally"
| means what it says.
| layer8 wrote:
| Literally not a piece of cake. :D
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Are printed papers or magazines toxic?
| Galacta7 wrote:
| 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)?
| test1235 wrote:
| > He had suggested having his words printed on a very large
| cake
|
| I guess that would just be eating cake, so not really any
| form of penance
| karmicthreat wrote:
| The one thing I would really like for ethernet is a smaller
| connector. But one that is still able to handle self-made cables.
| So something like just throwing a Type-C connector at it probably
| isn't going to work.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| USB-C would certainly work, you just need the right (wire)
| mounting device behind the plug. It's unlikely to be very slim
| though.
| fanf2 wrote:
| It would be difficult to make a port that works as USB-C with
| ethernet as an alternate mode. In USB-C there are separate
| transmit and receive differential pairs, whereas in (gigabit
| and later) ethernet the pairs are bidirectional.
| good8675309 wrote:
| 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.
| kibwen wrote:
| It's honestly impressive how few qualms people have with the
| link layer, considering all the kerfuffle that gets raised for
| the address layer (IPv6) and the transport layer (QUIC) and the
| application layer (HTTP2/3). It's nice to have at least one
| protocol that feels "finished" (in a good sense).
| fanf2 wrote:
| 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.
| projektfu wrote:
| 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.
| msla wrote:
| > I think the only part that hasn't been "fixed" is that it
| sends frames.
|
| And this is just terminology: An Ethernet protocol data unit
| is a frame because it's Ethernet and an IP protocol data unit
| is a packet because it's IP. You could switch the terms
| around and nothing would actually change.
| floxy wrote:
| "I don't know what language will be used to program high
| performance computers in 50 years, but we know it will be
| called Fortran."
| demondemidi wrote:
| Xerox PARC didn't move fast and break things. They thought hard
| and delivered rock solid inventions. Such a huge difference
| between script kiddies turning into billionaires, and actual
| engineers.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| The kiddo complained about low ping for PS5 - tried PoE so
| eventually got a electrician to run a conduit from the router in
| my office through the outside the wall all around the house to
| the outside of her room.
|
| We have a pitched roof but there are trusses, and I am not built
| like a hobbit if I need to replace the cable.
| msbhvn wrote:
| To paraphrase Bob Metcalf, "I don't know what will come after
| Ethernet, but it will be called Ethernet."
| stiray wrote:
| 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 you don't have that option. On fiber, my
| cost to uplink is 1000/500 for 35 euros / month and I want to use
| it on clients too.
|
| I have 2.4 and 5GHz turned on, but the LTE is better alternative
| so no one uses them. I have Mikrotics everywhere and Wave 2 is an
| option, but really, why bother if the ethernet cable works so
| much better? Not to even mention PoE (+ injectors).
|
| Physics cant be broken by whatever the current fashion is.
|
| So at the end, if you cant (for whatever reason) use ethernet in
| apartment and your mobile sucks? Go for the latest trend in
| wireless. This is not an issue? Use cable, nothing comes close to
| it.
| 8zah6q7 wrote:
| Unfortunately, many smart TVs use 100 Mbps RJ45 ports, so WiFi
| is usually faster. Some TVs allow you to plug in a USB to RJ45
| adapter, but most of the USB ports are only USB 2 speed, so the
| practical limit is 300 Mbps. Some nice ones have USB 3 ports
| enabling 1 Gbps through an RJ45 adapter. I wish the
| manufacturers put at least gigabit (if not 2.5 Gbps) RJ45 ports
| on TVs.
| jmathai wrote:
| Faster, but probably less reliable and more inconsistent. For
| this reason, I wire my TVs into the network :)
| ipython wrote:
| I would never plug a smart TV into any network, but
| regardless of that - when you have an individual endpoint
| like the smart TV (or the Apple TV, Android device, etc),
| what's the practical advantage of a 2.5Gbit port on that
| device? You aren't able to watch the movie/TV show any
| faster.. so you're constrained to the data rate of the
| content you're consuming at ~1 to ~1.5x speed (if you are in
| to that sort of thing).
|
| Taking a 4k stream as an example, a compressed 4k stream is
| not going to exceed about 50Mbps, so even a 100Mbps data rate
| will have a 2x safety factor - and since you're wired, you're
| going to get full use of that data rate unlike Wi-Fi. You're
| not streaming uncompressed video as that would require more
| than 2.5Gbps, and if you want to upgrade to 8k video, you'll
| need a new TV anyway...
|
| I always wire in my TV and other fixed infrastructure
| because, since they aren't moving, there's no advantage to
| using a data layer protocol that, by definition, enables
| mobile access. In addition, latency and jitter is always
| better on wire versus wireless, and keeping these devices off
| the wireless frees up precious airtime that the rest of my
| devices that _do_ move can use instead. It 's a win-win-win
| all around.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| > Taking a 4k stream as an example, a compressed 4k stream
| is not going to exceed about 50Mbps, so even a 100Mbps data
| rate will have a 2x safety factor
|
| That's _average_ throughput. _Peak_ can be much higher,
| especially on high bitrate content and remuxes, and
| especially with newer HD audio formats. Modern smart TVs
| have a pitifully short buffer, so you can run into
| problems. I did on my Sony, and switching to wifi solved
| it.
| rini17 wrote:
| Excuseme, what kind of content do you have with more than
| 100mbps bitrate?
| imp0cat wrote:
| This should answer your question:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIef8iRZhLE
| leptons wrote:
| I'm glad wifi exists. It's very useful. It isn't always 100%
| reliable, but I don't really expect it to be. I have 7 wifi
| routers around my property for different uses. 5 of them are
| for IoT devices so they can live on their own network. 2 of the
| wifi routers are for my family's personal devices.
|
| But every computer I use other than my laptops are wired with
| cat6 or better. I even run an ethernet line all the way out to
| the separated garage because I have a backup computer out
| there.
|
| Ethernet _is great_ , but wifi is also pretty great, they each
| have their use cases.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > 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.)
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| What would we replace it with? Fiber? Quantum entanglement?
| Telepathy? Ethernet itself is the common-sense design you would
| arrive at if you needed to move bits from point A to B. Of
| course, things like the connector form factor could have evolved
| radically differently. Maybe in a parallel universe Ethernet uses
| something more like a unidirectional USB plug.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Something that amazes me with Ethernet is how you can mix and
| match various cables and speeds and things do still work. Just
| for fun semi-recently I hooked a 10 MBit/s only hub (not even a
| switch, a hub) to a 10/100 MBit/s switch, to a Gigabit switch
| (that'd also work at 100 Mbp/s) and everything would just work...
| kornhole wrote:
| Ah brings back memories of Bob Metcalfe. Out of college I worked
| for him at 3Com. We were making about three million NIC's a
| month, and it was like a cash machine. One of my first projects
| to support was trying to develop WIFI. We failed at that. Then
| Intel integrated the NIC capability into their chipsets. Cisco
| made better switches and routers. We went from a high flying
| silicon valley company to nothing.
| make3 wrote:
| how did Xerox invent so many things, that's crazy
| jonathaneunice wrote:
| 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!
| eigenvalue wrote:
| It's conceptually the same thing though, right? I guess it's
| like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _What 's marketed as "Ethernet" today is_ vastly _different
| from the 10base5 "yellow hose" originally called Ethernet._
|
| The framing is compatible across all of these changes: your
| 802.11 NIC has an Ethernet MAC address and can talk to to a
| copper-connected GigE interface. Copper and fibre interfaces
| can also talk to each other.
|
| Part of the reasons for the concept of OSI Layers is that you
| could change things at lower layers (Thicknet, Thinnet, co-ax,
| _etc_ ) and at higher layers (IP, AppleTalk, _etc_ ) and would
| continue to work.
|
| The OSI Layer 2 is the same for all the "variants" of Ethernet.
| That makes it 'the same' as the original.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I have a true story, narrated in _The Big Bucks_ where I briefly
| (2 or 3 seconds) took down the entire company (3Com), when it was
| running on ThinNet, which was the smaller coax used before
| twisted pair. The coax was in the baseboard, not in the air space
| overhead.
|
| No one noticed.
| drakonka wrote:
| I have recently been having to use ethernet plugged directly into
| the wall because despite reasonable speed test results, I see a
| ton of packet loss during video calls when going through my
| router (either wired or wireless)... So it's definitely going
| strong in this household -.-
| RecycledEle wrote:
| I'm surprised IEEE ignored Ethernet's child: Wi-Fi.
|
| Wi-Fi uses the CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with
| Collision Detect) that was developed for Ethernet. I view Wi-Fi
| as wireless Ethernet.
| StillBored wrote:
| I totally disagree with the idea that ethernet is "going strong".
|
| On the high end, it is a fragmentation mess of high speed
| (100Gbit+) technologies and mac/phy's.
|
| There is no midrange at this point.
|
| And the low end is price discriminated such that the Nbase spec
| couldn't even mandate all of 1/2.5/5/10 as required as part of
| the spec with the speeds being automatically selected based on
| cable quality.
|
| And its largely dead because its to expensive and Wifi is more
| convenient.
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