Do You NEED Faster Ethernet?

What's the point of routers and switches that only have one Ethernet port above 1 Gbps, such as a 2.5 Gbps, 5 Gbps, or 10 Gbps port?

FOLLOW US ELSEWHERE
---------------------------------------------------

[ReiEvangelista]

During the early 2000s, my friend and I were discussing if buying an 80Gb HDD makes sense over a 40Gb one. "Are we even gonna use that much space?" we asked ourselves.

[Dominus_Potatus]

1 Gbps seems big until you convert bit to byte.
1 Gbps = 125 MB/s
If you have Home NAS that being used intensively by a lot of people at the same time, 2.5 Gbps will be useful.

[Krimarai]

I think that worldwide 2.5gbit internet plans are really rare (anything above 1gbit). So it is more common and useful to have 2.5gbit lan ports instead of wan for access to home server or ect.

[AsthmaQueen]

I was really surprised when i found out my MSI tomahawk B550 had a 2.5G port, when I got on the new modem/router combo which usually I'd avoid and it also had 2.5G out and decent wifi 6? like wow! I see burst speeds in the 1.1 range on my 1 gig plan

[adm_ezri]

imagine getting anywhere near Gb internet. before I moved house I was lucky to get 10Mbps, even now I'm lucky to get 50Mbps. the infrastructure just isn't there in most of the UK

[ploxyzero]

I have gigabit and most of my downloads are limited in speed server-side anyway, so 2.5 doesn't really seem too useful for just a single computer

[fthorsen]

They should've mentioned Link Aggregation (LAG) here as well. If you have one device which lots of users/devices connect to, such as a NAS, LAG is a lot cheaper. Take the scenario with a NAS with movies. If more than one person is using the NAS, it's capped out at 1GB for a standard 1GB network. If you create a LAG with 2x1GB links between the NAS and the switch, you won't achieve 2GB speeds for a single (2.5, 5, 10 GB) client, but two 1GB clients can saturate the LAG. This means that the NAS can push twice the amount of data to multiple clients without any cost to upgrading your gear (as long as you have free ports on the NAS and switch, and that both support LAG). I've done this myself at home, until I take the 10GB plunge. But right now I really don't have a usecase for 10GB network as long as I run the NAS in LAG (and it supports 4x1GB LAGs).

[CHRnZ-fuob]

Topic that you could cover in the future: How does PoE work?

[tfilefan]

I thought 2.5GBASE-T is totally useless because none of my equipment does not support the standard.
Then, I recently noticed that: 2.5 and 5 Gbps are good tradeoff point on the power consumption v. line rate curve if you are sticking to RJ-45 twisted pair cables.
It generates much less heat compared to 10GBASE-T. Power consumption is also the reason why I prefer SFP+ if you want full 10Gbps bandwidth.

[Adderall]

*Looks at my max 10Mbit's connection*

Connection:
"Don't even think about it..."

[sketchtherapy]

I’ve been waiting for this thanks more on this please.

[tyswid]

A tech quickie on 3D printing would be cool, maybe a 2 parter on filament printing and resin printing with mention of other more exotic printing materials like concrete!

[tylerkulchinsky]

This was actually super helpful. Especially the part about cabling and Network Switch. I've had the same Ethernet cables in my house for a while and was wondering if there was any point to upgrading them. I'll stick with my cables for now and if I ever move I'll re-cable everything anyways!

[firestarter]

That beard raises James's power level to dangerous levels.

[mbralliable]

I have a 10 gig connection at home. On paper, it was a good idea. In practice, not so much. It's not much different from a gigabit connection in a lot of situations because the things I connect to aren't fast enough.

Steam on the other hand supports it and it's amazing.

Downside is the Network card was not cheap and takes up a PCIE slot.

[DarkHlmet]

if your router is able to use LACP you can connect two Ethernet cables to your computer and your router. enable LACP on both sides and set the hashing algorithm to MAC and IP Address. The traffic is split between two Ethernet connection based on the source and destination IP address. This doesnt allow you to use more than 1 GBit on a single connection but you have more bandwidth when you are using multiple connections (torrents) . Some Software vendors are using torrents to ship updates.

[Vargas]

I’d imagine most users would be fine with FastEthernet for their onboard unless they have a NAS or other LAN hosts that can use the gigabit and higher speed. Or if their local ISP isn’t a complete joke and offers good speed.

[Flowxing]

Id build everything on 2.5GBE and selectivly use 10Gbit, there is alot of switches available that have 2 or 4 10GBE and 8 2.5GBE. Connect the NAS and Workstation using 10GBE and the rest with 2.5GBE

[uolamer]

My newer motherboard had a single 2.5 gbit network port and a 1gbit. I have a few HDDs in my wifes PC and she accesses files on my PC. I bought a $30 PCIe 2.5 gbit network card for her computer and added a LAN between our PCs. This same thought process could be applied to a NAS or something else depending on the hardware. In my case I do not have any other 2.5 gbit devices or a switch too would have made sense.

[_Mercival_]

That upbeat royalty free tune in the background is my jam.