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posted by janrinok on Friday September 30 2016, @11:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the bits-of-whoosh dept.

There's fast and then there's fast! I found this story at Ars Technica which is reporting that the IEEE has approved the 802.3bz standard: 2.5Gbps over Cat 5e, 5Gbps over Cat 6:

A new Ethernet standard that allows for up to 2.5Gbps over normal Cat 5e cables (the ones you probably have in your house) has been approved by the IEEE. The standard—formally known as IEEE 802.3bz-2016, 2.5G/5GBASE-T, or just 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet—also allows for up to 5Gbps over Cat 6 cabling.

The new standard was specifically designed to bridge the copper-twisted-pair gap between Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbps), which is currently the fastest standard for conventional Cat 5e and Cat 6 cabling, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, which can do 10Gbps but requires special Cat 6a or 7 cabling. Rather impressively work only began on the new standard at the end of 2014, which gives you some idea of how quickly the powers that be wanted to push this through.

[...] The new 2.5G/5GBASE-T standard (PDF) will let you run 2.5Gbps over 100 metres of Cat 5e or 5Gbps over 100 metres of Cat 6, which should be fine for most homes and offices. The standard also implements other nice-to-have features, including various Power over Ethernet standards (PoE, PoE+, and UPoE)—handy for rolling out Wi-Fi access points.

The physical (PHY) layer of 2.5G/5GBASE-T is very similar to 10GBASE-T, but instead of 400MHz of spectral bandwidth it uses either 200MHz or 100MHz, thus not requiring a super-high-quality mega-shielded cable. ... Other differences from 10GBASE-T include low density parity checking (LDPC) rather than CRC-8 error correction, and PAM-16 modulation rather than DSQ128.>

These last acronyms are all designed to deal with errors in data transmission. low density parity checking, CRC, Pulse amplitude modulation, and DSQ128 is a 128-bit implementation of Double Square QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation).

As this standard was just approved it will still be a while before commercial products are available, let alone for them to become affordable for regular consumers. I'm curious if there are any Soylentils who are already maxing out their gigabit networks, and if so, what are you doing to max it out? How much would this additional speed help?


Original Submission

Related Stories

Ethernet Technology Consortium Unveils 800 Gbps Ethernet 21 comments

Rebranded Ethernet Technology Consortium Unveils 800 Gigabit Ethernet

With an increasing demand for networking speed and throughput performance within the datacenter and high performance computing clusters, the newly rebranded Ethernet Technology Consortium has announced a new 800 Gigabit Ethernet technology. Based upon many of the existing technologies that power contemporary 400 Gigabit Ethernet, the 800GBASE-R standard is looking to double performance once again, to feed ever-hungrier datacenters.

The recently-finalized standard comes from the Ethernet Technology Consortium, the non-IEEE, tech industry-backed consortium formerly known as the 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium. The group was originally created to develop 25, 50, and 100 Gigabit Ethernet technology, and while IEEE Ethernet standards have since surpassed what the consortium achieved, the consortium has stayed formed to push even faster networking speeds, and changing its name to keep with the times. Some of the biggest contributors and supporters of the ETC include Broadcom, Cisco, Google, and Microsoft, with more than 40 companies listed as integrators of its work.

[...] All told, the 800GbE standard is the latest step for an industry as a whole that is moving to Terabit (and beyond) Ethernet. And while those future standards will ultimately require faster [Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes)] to drive the required individual lane speeds, for now 800GBASE-R can deliver 800GbE on current generation hardware. All of which should be a boon for the standard's intended hyperscaler and HPC operator customers, who are eager to get more bandwidth between systems.

Related: As 100 Gbps Ethernet Picks Up, Google Ponders 5 Petabits Per Second
Ethernet Switch Sales Flat, But 40 Gbps Sales Take Off
Here Comes 5Gbps Networking Over Standard Cables
Aquantia Launches 2.5/5/10G Ethernet Chips for Consumers
25G/50G Ethernet Specification Finalized


Original Submission

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  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @11:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @11:06AM (#408326)

    Empty buildings
    But they keep building
    Concrete cold feet
    We forgot so much we used to know
    Cuz it there’s no room to grow we’ll all explode
    Everybody’s talking shit
    You get used to it
    We float on and on and on
    And everybody’s feeling bored just cut the cord

    That’s dragging you on and on
    Stuck in the middle of people
    There ain’t no way around it
    Like if you hole up inside you’ll stay warm and dry
    No no no no

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @11:54AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @11:54AM (#408334)

      Guerrilla marketing for RVIVR ??

      • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday September 30 2016, @12:10PM

        by RamiK (1813) on Friday September 30 2016, @12:10PM (#408338)

        How else would they butcher punk if not by using guerrilla psiops tactics against unsuspecting listeners?

        --
        compiling...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @01:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @01:54PM (#408376)

      Awww, come on bucko! Don't you want a... balloon? Ohh yes... they float, Georgie... they float... and when you're down here, with me... you float too!

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 30 2016, @12:09PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday September 30 2016, @12:09PM (#408337) Journal

    It has a ring to it.

    Will home laptops and desktops ever support 2.5-10 Gbps Ethernet?

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 1) by FunkyLich on Friday September 30 2016, @12:14PM

      by FunkyLich (4689) on Friday September 30 2016, @12:14PM (#408341)

      It seems we will have to wait a while for that. That's what the very last part of the article says.

      Now that the standard has been approved, we won't have to wait long for enterprise 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps Ethernet networking gear. What's less clear is whether we'll get consumer-grade 2.5Gbps equipment; we probably will, but not for a little while yet.

      Next question is: How long a time interval is "a while"?

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 30 2016, @05:49PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Friday September 30 2016, @05:49PM (#408467)

        Longer than "a moment", shorter than "an eternity"

    • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday September 30 2016, @12:21PM

      by RamiK (1813) on Friday September 30 2016, @12:21PM (#408344)

      There's plenty of 10GbE PCI-e cards on the market. e.g. first google hit https://www.small-tree.com/categories/10gb-ethernet-cards/ [small-tree.com]

      The thing is, it's a lot of CPU lanes for bandwidth no home user needs per-client. Still, controllers for switches and the likes tend to trickle down to home routers and switches so it might get there at least in the infrastructure.

      --
      compiling...
      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday September 30 2016, @06:42PM

        by frojack (1554) on Friday September 30 2016, @06:42PM (#408489) Journal

        I'm curious if there are any Soylentils who are already maxing out their gigabit networks, and if so, what are you doing to max it out?

        ...

        for bandwidth no home user needs per-client.

        ...

        640K ought to be eneough

        Its not too difficult to outpace typical home network composed of gigabyte network adapters.
        Its just fast enough that you are tempted use remote storage as if it were local, but you always find out in the end that it just doesn't work as well as your local hard drive.

        10 Gigabit Ethernet would be great, but its a daunting task to replace every NIC and Switch and Cable and Jack between you and your data.
        If you could get it down to just replacing the NICs and Switch it might be manageable.

        Then we could all launch off doing things that are probably unwise in the first place just because the technology allows us to do it.
        .

        Its worth while to bear in mind The relative Speeds of things we deal with even in home or small office networds.

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        • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday September 30 2016, @11:19PM

          by RamiK (1813) on Friday September 30 2016, @11:19PM (#408580)

          How? Raw 4k 60fps is 700 MB/s while compressed gets around 200MB/s. How is 1gbE not enough for homes in the foreseeable future?

          Mind you, we're also talking about GPUs + CPU lanes + RAM all needing to scale to match...

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          compiling...
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @12:24AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @12:24AM (#408596)

            How? Raw 4k 60fps is 700 MB/s while compressed gets around 200MB/s. How is 1gbE not enough for homes in the foreseeable future?

            Because you never need to copy large amounts of data over the network, a home media server is always accessed by exactly one person, and no-one will ever use VR so we don't need to think beyond 4k.

          • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday October 01 2016, @12:44AM

            by frojack (1554) on Saturday October 01 2016, @12:44AM (#408603) Journal

            Don't know where you live, but there's far more than one person with a single device in most households.

            --
            No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
            • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:55AM

              by RamiK (1813) on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:55AM (#408616)

              In my experience, 4k is only useful for avoiding pixelation in large monitors and for high dpi computer font rendering\hinting. So, unless everyone's bedrooms are cinema sized, three 4k 60fps streaming TVs is more then enough.

              Since monitors are produced to scale, I think it's still possible that in 3-5 years we'll be seeing 4k dropping enough in price to push out 1080p simply on costs. But for most people, unless fiber steps in with 100gbE, they won't rewire or change switches.

              But hey, that's just extrapolating how 1080p spread in the per-collapse health market conditions. Maybe some economic boom will speed things along... Will see.

              --
              compiling...
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:56AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:56AM (#408617)

            One byte is eight bits. 200MB/s = 1600Mbps =1.6Gbps. That's more than 1Gbps. Do you understand now?

            • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @03:08AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @03:08AM (#408635)

              OP is following current industry practice in quoting lossless figures in MB\s since high quality H.265 compresses 1:8. It's why the "scale to match" bit follows immediately after. Since the entire stack, and not just the switches needs to be replaced.

              That is, lossless 200MB\s is 200mbps lossy.

              Practically speaking though, OP was being way too cautious. TV\Online broadcasters go bellow 100mbps since they're handling processed\blurred content and the compression algorithms are optimized to Gaussian blur as a result.

              Look up the 9p documents google put online. It's all in there.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday September 30 2016, @06:54PM

        by frojack (1554) on Friday September 30 2016, @06:54PM (#408499) Journal

        Your link to "plenty of 10GbE PCI-e cards" start with a $499 price tag for a single port nic.

        Your typical gigabit card is sub $10, and very good ones go for below $30.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @12:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @12:21PM (#408345)

      IEEE 802.5 has a ring to it.

      • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Friday September 30 2016, @12:40PM

        by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 30 2016, @12:40PM (#408350) Journal

        The best kind of ring

        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @04:14PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @04:14PM (#408425)
          Best? Not really. It's just a token ring.
    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday September 30 2016, @01:23PM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday September 30 2016, @01:23PM (#408360) Journal

      Yes, yes, bz does have a nice ring to it!

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Friday September 30 2016, @01:49PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Friday September 30 2016, @01:49PM (#408372) Homepage

    10 Gigabit Ethernet, which can do 10Gbps

    Wait... wait... carry the one... subtract the number you first thought of...

    Yup, math checks out. Carry on.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday September 30 2016, @04:59PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday September 30 2016, @04:59PM (#408441)

      Actually, it doesn't, especially if you mostly transfer small packets.
      The transport is not 10Gb/s, and the payload is not 10Gb/s
      /pedant

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday September 30 2016, @06:47PM

        by frojack (1554) on Friday September 30 2016, @06:47PM (#408494) Journal

        Exactly.

        Actual throughput is never anywhere near cited throughput, even in the most elaborately contrived test environment.
        You are doing well to get 50% on average.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday September 30 2016, @06:50PM

          by bob_super (1357) on Friday September 30 2016, @06:50PM (#408496)

          My FPGAs get really close to max theoretical capacity, but that's easier when you know exactly what traffic you are dealing with.

  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday September 30 2016, @01:51PM

    by meustrus (4961) on Friday September 30 2016, @01:51PM (#408374)

    So I've been thinking about wiring my old, old house for ethernet. It currently has none. I was going to put in shielded CAT6 with an aftermarket commercial gigabit switch. Should this impact my plans at all? Does this maybe just mean that if I ever need a bump, I should be able to go to 5Gbps over the CAT6 and not even consider CAT6A?

    I'm also really curious about other factors of the connection. How does the latency and error rate compare among these different speeds?

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:07PM (#408378)

      Until this, there was no real use for Cat6. I did a Cat5e wiring and am very happy with it; supposing I get this hardware, I could then do 2.5 Gbps. If I wanted to.

      If you seriously think that high speed networking will be useful for you, and you are willing to put up with the extra cable bulk, use Cat6a.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:13PM (#408382)

      I'm in the same situation as you, and will likely use Cat 6A. If I'm stringing stuff through the walls I may as well use a damn good cable.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:49PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:49PM (#408394)

        Just know that cat6 is a lot harder to string through the walls than cat5. It is significantly less bendy. Yes, that's a technical term. It probably doesn't make much difference if you are wiring new construction. But retrofitting into walls that are already sheetrocked is going to be even more unpleasant.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by agentcooper on Friday September 30 2016, @02:54PM

      by agentcooper (460) on Friday September 30 2016, @02:54PM (#408397)

      I design large networks for a living so I'll make an alternate suggestion that may work better for a home user.

      The tools, patch panels and keystones required for very high speed copper connections are expensive and require a lot of training in order to install something that will pass cable certifications. If you are planing on doing something that might support 2.5 or 5 Gb/s in your home you would have to take those steps or it would prove too unreliable.

      Most of the work in installing a cabled network is in the pulling of the cable. As such I would recommend that you install regular Cat5e cabling which will support 1 Gb/s operation and anyone who is reasonably careful with their terminations can install cabling that will pass certification. At the same time that you are pulling the Cat5e pull in single mode fibre optic cable (zip cord is fine if you are careful - observe local building codes re. plenum rated vs. conduit). You don't need to terminate it just leave a foot or so coiled up in the box. Single mode fibre is cheap now but terminating it takes both skill and specialized tools. Having said that, who knows what might be available by the time you actually need to make use of that fibre in the walls. Don't forget to leave a "service loop" back at your patch panel. Ten feet of extra cabling should allow you to move the panel to pretty much anywhere inside a room should the need arise. Same goes for the fibre.

      • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday September 30 2016, @05:21PM

        by meustrus (4961) on Friday September 30 2016, @05:21PM (#408451)

        Interesting. So do you expect the bare fiber to be useful for networking in the future? Or is there a way to make it useful now? Why do you recommend this option?

        --
        If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @06:27PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @06:27PM (#408485)

          Find a single mode SFP module and as long as you can polish the cable ends you should be fine (there are machines for doing so for a few hundred bucks. Or you can try and do it manually, but it is generally a terrible idea.) I have seen them for 150-200USD for pairs. Cheap dropshipped from china.

          With the proper grade of fiber you can upgrade to 10G with no trouble, and given your cable length, possible 40G or 100G when they get affordable (or if, since 10G has only recently dropped in price, and 1G is still not on every piece of equipment despite being 16+ years old.)

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday September 30 2016, @07:07PM

          by frojack (1554) on Friday September 30 2016, @07:07PM (#408505) Journal

          Fiber nics, cabling, and jacks are already deployed in newer buildings, especially those designed for tech workers.
          Not cheaply.

          Your entry level nic [startech.com] will be a couple hundred bucks when the dust settles.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday October 01 2016, @02:39AM

        by butthurt (6141) on Saturday October 01 2016, @02:39AM (#408629) Journal

        A conduit with a string in it can be a wonderful thing.

        https://www.amazon.com/Single-Plenum-Rated-Corrugated-Innerduct/dp/B00FZ5X5PM [amazon.com]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:57PM (#408400)

    It seems that 1Gb/sec devices never even come close to getting 1Gb/sec over Ethernet. So will these new standards actually come close to getting their advertised speeds?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Friday September 30 2016, @03:42PM

      by ledow (5567) on Friday September 30 2016, @03:42PM (#408415) Homepage

      Because:

      a) People confuse gigabits and gigabytes (that's gigabit cable can only do 128Mbytes / second).
      b) People use cheap cable and connectors not to spec (yes, even the connectors, crimps, patches etc. have to be standardised too).
      c) People run the cable past mains cable, noisy electrical fittings, etc. and expect full speed, no errors.
      d) People buy cheap junky switches that "talk" at gigabit speed but have such poor backend bandwidth that even a single gigabit-connection flooded to max will make them slow to a crawl. I found a Netgear 5-port switch in an installation once that could barely handle 1.2Gbps over it, let alone 5 x 1Gbit. If you buy a 8-port switch, it needs to be able to switch 8Gbps for it to work at max speed on all ports, it's not rocket science.

      Hint: I run multiple, redundant multi-gigabit LACP links around a site, with LACP links to serious servers, gigabit guaranteed to every desktop and port, and it costs a FORTUNE. But we rarely get anywhere close to maxing out even a single port unless we try. Normal use just doesn't manage that, even on a large network. We can MAKE it do that (as the servers will happily provide 60Gbps of traffic to the network). You can max out the interlinks and the port and the desktop, no problem at all, but you won't get close to maxing out the switching capacity or the server.

      But that's because we spec stuff properly. Even then, you'll find that what hits first are cable quality, the NIC in the computer (Gigabit doesn't mean it can write your network profile to disk at the same speed while it's doing everything else to log you on, for example), then individual switch limits (unless you have seriously expensive switches or switches doing nothing else).

      But you want to max out a Gigabit connection? I can do that to every port on every switch if I so desire. The problem is doing that with useful data from a server, or doing that cheaply, or doing that when your upstream or other things are the bottleneck anyway.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @04:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @04:23PM (#408426)
      Huh? I regularly get 1Gbps or close enough. What are you doing? Using really small packets? Or transferring to/fro the "Cloud"? Or actually using WiFi at some point?
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @04:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @04:11PM (#408422)

    I'm curious if there are any Soylentils who are already maxing out their gigabit networks, and if so, what are you doing to max it out?

    Just copy a large file? 1Gbps = 125MB/sec. Even a single normal hard drive nowadays can do sequential transfers at that speed or higher. RAID10 arrays, SSDs can be much faster.

    I can get 120MB/sec on my home network copying from one Windows PC to another Windows computer via Windows file sharing (SSDs on both PCs).

    If you are using Samba you might need to tweak the config a bit. But be aware some NICs are crap - they support 1Gbps links but they don't have the internal bandwidth to actually transfer at that rate. For example the old PCI bandwidth is 133MB/sec so it's unlikely you're going to get 1Gbps from a 1Gbps NIC that uses PCI (there were indeed PCI 1Gbps NICs, they were faster than 100Mbps NICs). With modern hardware you should normally be able to hit 1Gbps easily - PCI Express, faster drives etc.

    If you are transferring VMs or backups of VMs then 1Gbps can feel a bit slow. Video stuff often involves large files too.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Friday September 30 2016, @08:14PM

      by Hyperturtle (2824) on Friday September 30 2016, @08:14PM (#408524)

      I get 99.97% saturation on my gigabit links. I am copying from RAID 10s, RAID 5s and SSDs; otherwise, a generic desktop hard drive might hit 50MB/s (so, 40% or so utilization on a typical workstation depending on what stat and where you are looking).

      CPU availability matters in desktops, if you don't have a good quality nic (intel server cards are good, many broadcom cards turn out pretty well... realtek cards I have had success with if the CPU is not being taxed and the network is tweaked for it... performance can be hard to wring out of a realtek anything, but the price is often right.

      Decent switches with ASICs that do hardware based switching is important for the network; if you ever used a network simulator, they don't do much in the way of switches for the good reason that its hard to do that well in emulation. VMware etc is often configured to provide dummy virtual switches to either host it all internally or dump it onto the network.

      Jumbo frames help when you configure it right, as do the advanced nic settings for tcp offload, buffers, and so on.

      One size fits all for a typical user, but you likely need to tweak your settings on a server or intermediary switch if you want to see consistent levels of gigabit traffic from end to end.

      The OP that commented on his network configuration is spot on.

      If you buy something for $50 with green lights that say 1gb, you are getting ports that are electrically compatible with the IEEE signaling standard for gigabit ethernet. You might get 2gbps total out of all of the ports on that cute rectangle.

      If you drop a few hundred dollars, you probably will get many times the performance, but the lights will be just as green.

      I have seen elderly 100mb cisco catalyst switches outperform linksys and netgear gigabit hardware, so your mileage may vary depending on your traffic types and the amount of tweaking you do.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @09:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @09:11PM (#408531)

    From the article:

    Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbps), which is currently the fastest standard for conventional Cat 5e and Cat 6 cabling

    This is wrong. 802.3an-2006 (10GBASE-T) supports 10 gigabit on category 6 UTP cable runs up to 55 metres. Probably more than enough for any typical residential installation.