back to article Crusty Cat 5e/6 cables just magically sped up to 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps

The IEEE has approved the specification covering 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps Ethernet, 802.3bz. In particular, the approval signifies that the work item still incomplete at the end of 2015, the interface between the Media Access Control (MAC) and the physical (PHY) layers has been completed. Last December, NBase-T Alliance leader …

  1. Brian Miller

    More speed!

    More cat videos!

    Oh, and lots of opportunities to replace all of that "old" kit with new kit. So far, I've never worked in a place where equipment was upgraded unless said equipment died. Like the ports stopped working, or it caught on fire, or where one time we actually upgraded the network behind the admin's back.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Re: More speed!

      So far, all three here but I've been here forever (15 years). Skipping this though. 10 Gbe for the wired is next, behind the back natch. 802.11ac is so golly gee whiz that that's golden for a while. By the time it isn't, well they'll notice how a quick card change, nothing new run, gives a nice speed bump again,... And then bump the wireless the next after that.

      Been doing this dance a long time as well. Twice as long AAMOF.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: More speed!

        If you have cat6a, sure 10GbaseT makes more sense, but it is more expensive and more power hungry. I wouldn't be surprised to see devices that include a gigabit ethernet adapter to switch to a 2.5 or 5 instead of going to 10, since 10 requires cat6a that rules out most installs and would be a larger jump in cost.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: More speed!

          "10 requires cat6a "

          You can go about 30 metres with 10G on cat5e. It's out of spec but it does work and 30 metres is often all that's needed.

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: More speed!

      Replacing kit is cheaper than replacing cabling. Even if you do it yourself.

      Though, to be honest, more than 1G on a Home/Home Office/Small Buisiness network is usually a complete overkill. Even if you put 802.1ac in them, it cannot saturate a Gig as there is bugger all to feed a Gig of demand. Neither the Internet uplink, nor the local file storage, etc provide that to the average number of clients in a SMB.

      So this is quite clearly geared towards various business and SP wifi deployments and that is not such a big market compared to residential. We will see - I will not expect the price for this one to drop very fast. It may even fetch a premium compared to 10Gbit as it works over crap cabling.

      1. richardcox13

        Re: More speed!

        As I discovered recently local file storage, and not particularly quick local file storage (destination was a 5400 RPM disk) can quite happily saturate 1Gbps Ethernet.

        On folders of moderately sized files (~10MB) transfer was hitting the network buffers moving at a net rate at about 950Mbps.

        (Of course when the copy hit folders of small files, sub 4kb, the net transfer rate tanked :-(.)

        1. MrXavia

          Re: More speed!

          Exactly, I saturate my 1Gbs network at home with photo/movie transfers to my basic nas....

          I have been considering upgrading to a 10gb lan (I have cat6 cables)

          1. herman

            Re: More speed!

            Hmm, I can still remember the pain of editing a document over a 300 baud modem and it wasn't just the slow modem that was the problem.

          2. Roland6 Silver badge

            Re: More speed!

            I have been considering upgrading to a 10gb lan (I have cat6 cables)

            IEEE 802 back in 2014 finally agreed to take Plastic Optical Fibre (POF) seriously. POF has been around since the late 1980's, but was focused on the 'traditional' fibre infrastructure; POF was equivalent to quartz fibre over sub 1km distances. However, it seems that someone finally woke up and realised that it could be used as an alternative to RJ45.

            Whilst current implementations are sub 150Mbps, the focus is getting agreement on a 1Gbps standard, after which I would presume people will want to push it...

            So whilst not an off-the-shelf solution today, worth watching "this space".

      2. P. Lee

        Re: More speed!

        >more than 1G on a Home/Home Office/Small Buisiness network is usually a complete overkill.

        It would be nice to be able to put SSDs in my home server without wasting them.

        But yes, that's pretty bursty traffic and not at all critical.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: More speed!

        "as there is bugger all to feed a Gig of demand. Neither the Internet uplink, nor the local file storage, etc provide that to the average number of clients in a SMB."

        Well, there might not be where you work, but 10G iSCSI makes quite a difference, and I know of several small advertising/design places that have 10G to the desktop...

        I've even got 10G in my home NAS and VM hosts...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: More speed!

      When the company (a large defense one) which acquired us decided to consolidate its sites *two years* ago, we were moved into a larger one from our small one (built in 2003 and working since the beginning at 1Gb). With our surprise, the new site was still at 100Mb - when asked, they replied "here everything is at 100Mb, do you need more??!!". Luckily we had all our networking gear from the old site and managed to implement our network with it - we shift much more data over the wires than they do...

  2. Bronek Kozicki

    @richardcox13 yup, I think that's exactly the problem they are trying to address. Users are sending ever-increasing amounts of data over the same old network. And by "amounts of data" I mean more and larger files. It just so happens that we have more and more devices attached to networks, and as they are becoming more powerful they also happen to use, or produce, larger files. Or alternatively more of them. Consider a size of single RAW image file for typical DSLR was 10 years ago some 3MB, now 30MB due to higher resolution and dynamic range (digital imaging is just an example). Or growing playlists in whatever streaming service we happen to use and with higher quality files, etc. Or growing popularity of streaming TV, and the list goes on.

    1. Alien8n

      Most of my images are 20MB each, and I can do 4000-6000 a weekend. Where I work however I've seen files upto 50MB but then these are for trade publications and signage so need to be able to be blown up to quite large print sizes.

  3. Andy Livingstone

    Dictionary

    SPED UP? Really?

    1. Anonymous IV

      Re: Dictionary

      Yes, sped. "past and past participle of speed", says OED.

  4. herman

    Err... 'had already begun'

    Did the El'Reg editor attend an Americun Publick Skool?

    1. Jim Mitchell

      Personally, I find it hard to keep track of all the possible verb tenses. What are there? 12?

  5. jms222

    One really important thing is the ability to have 5GBps RJ45 SFP+ which will enable bridging between boxes with SFP+ ports and boxes with RJ45 ports. (10 is too power hungry for SFP.)

  6. jamesb2147

    Correction

    Um, that's 802.3bz.

    802.11bz would be a wireless standard, as I understand it.

  7. Adam JC

    I can see this being useful...

    In buildings where CAT5e has been ran between comms cabinets. I have a business park in mind that could do with this as they're getting close to saturating the trunk cables, jumping from 1Gb to 5Gb with nothing more than an SFP would be a nice little bonus and give some breathing room I guess.

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