2. 1Gbps Local network transfers are seldom slowed by the network (as large file work typically involves HDD still)
3. Where local network transfers are impeded by the network speed the transferring itself isn't a frequent enough and blocking thing that people feel they need to fix it... they just go make a cup of tea once or twice a day
4. There are a lot of old network devices and cables out there, some built into the fabric of buildings (wall network sockets and cable runs)
5. WiFi is very very convenient, so much so that 250Mbps is good enough for almost anything and most people would rather be wireless at that speed than wired at a much higher speed (gamers and video professionals being an exception)
And ultimately, the cost and effort of investing in it doesn't produce an overwhelming benefit to people.
Even in quite large offices, it's hard to argue that this is worth it when the vast majority of people are just using web applications and very lossy audio and video meetings across the internet.
Another factor: data centres moved to fiber. And fiber is less physically robust and not great for desktop connections or plugging in to a laptop.
10GBASE-T exists, but it turns out pushing 10gbit/s over 100m of twisted pair requires chips that are hot and power hungry. Again, not great for desktops or laptops. And because it’s not used in data centres, there are no economies of scale or trickle down effects.
Gigabit Ethernet and wifi being “good enough” combined with 10gig over twisted pair being expensive and power hungry means that the consumer space has been stuck for a long time.
2.5Gb ethernet seems to be starting to trickle out at least. It's becoming a more common thing on desktop motherboards. Doesn't seem like there is a lot of 2.5Gb routers yet though.
Thank Intel for single-handedly changing the 2.5Gbps landscape by integrating 2.5Gb Ethernet on their chipsets, allowing no-brainer OEM integration. Unfortunately, unless ISP router OEMs (Nokia, Zyxel, Huawei et al.) do their part (the reason being that very few people actually bothers to buy a separate router), we will not see the economies of scale necessary to fully finish 2.5Gb Ethernet.
Maybe this used to be the case long ago, but I don’t think it’s true today. Personally I’m pretty rough with fiber (having slammed cabinet doors on fiber, looped fiber around posts with a low bend radius, left the ends exposed to dust, etc) and had no issues within a data center. Can’t say the same for copper. Even the cheapest 10km optics have more margin when your link is only 50m.
Oh and bend insensitive fiber is dirt cheap and works just fine when it’s tied into knots.
Yes, even in my days with FDDI (pre-2000) you could wrap them around your finger, no matter if multi- or single mode. At least for 'demo'-purposes, to stop the hyperventilation of some people. Nonetheless I've seen horrible installations, where I've straightened out the gordic knots when I've seen them, just to be sure ;-)
The robustness gap has narrowed (not just with better fiber; some cat-6 STP is surprisingly fragile compared to old cat 5), but I think copper is still more robust for short runs where there will be many insertions and removals.
> And fiber is less physically robust and not great for desktop connections
i buy armored multimode patch cables for, i dunno, 10 or 20% more per unit length, and they seem indestructible in my residential short-distance use cases.
> Gigabit Ethernet and wifi being “good enough”
i think this explains it all. when the average user prefers wireless to wired gigabit, we know how much bandwidth they actually need, and it isn't >=gigabit.
It takes special connectors to survive being disconnected and reconnected daily and cables left disconnected with out the risk of an accidental laser eye surgery
> It takes special connectors to survive being disconnected and reconnected daily
i don't know what you're using, but the LC/LC connectors i use seem pretty durable, and the springy bit that wears out can be replaced. the SFP+ modules are all metal; i am unwilling to believe they can wear out.
> and cables left disconnected with out the risk of an accidental laser eye surgery
single mode, which isn't human-visible, is of concern but the multimode (which i mentioned using) isn't any worse than a cheap laser pointer. it isn't strong, and you can see it.
I mostly deal with single mode and in industrial environments, on top of the safety hazard fibers left dangling tend not to work when plugged back in due to dust. There are special connectors for applications such as ship to shore that address these issues.
Maybe a laser in your eye is an acceptable risk in your home but I doubt it is an acceptable hazard in a work place.
All excellent points but I'd remove gamers from there:
> (gamers and video professionals being an exception)
I play Stadia, 4K HDR 60FPS, just fine on a gigabit ethernet connection and 150MBit internet connection. Any games not streaming the entire video are fine with just kilobits/s of data, as long as the latency is good.
Gamers aren't a strong answer :D but they're the audiophiles of home computing hardware and networks and the most likely to overspend in the belief that it's better :D
Hm, that's taking it a bit far given that I've yet to see any gamer who believes that e.g. taping plastic bags with gravel to their network cables [1] will lower their ping times (if it is not for weighing down a cruddy connector which only works when you press the damn thing down, that is). There does not seem to be a gamer-equivalent of $30000 speaker cables [2] (8 ft., add $1500 per additional ft.) or $10.000 power cables [3] either. No, audiophiles still hold the biscuit for being the most easily deluded moneyed demographic out there. If Hans Christian Andersen were alive today he'd write a story about it, "The Emperor's new Speaker Cable" [4] where a little boy is the only one who dares to comment on the piece of rusty barbed wire connecting the speakers to the amplifier.
Show me the diamond-dust cooling paste for $10000 per CPU and you'll be right - for a little while. Soon you'll find that paste in larger $50.000 thimble-sized containers to be rubbed under all equipment "to open up the sound stage". Raving reviews will come in, "as if the composer is standing next to you", "the lows were really clearing up, as if the sun broke through the clouds".
Hm, k. BUT...everything counts in large amounts :)
So we have the very few audiophiles which totally ignore the thin copper layer on cheap PCBs, versus the whole market segment of twitchy gamers going for Bling, Bling, Bling without function on their RAM, coolers, vs. the equivalent stuff installed in laptops and servers which lacks that :-)
Gamers being hard wired has everything to do with consistent latency in twitch style FPS's. That said, consistent latency is pretty beneficial in most PVP games.
Seems like they're saying that gamers would prefer wired to wifi, which I think is reasonable - it's not so much a bandwidth issue as a latency issue - wifi has higher latency, and higher variance than wired ethernet, especially if you get a crappy client joining and filling up the airtime with retry attempts. But maybe that's dominated by ISP variance for most.
You probably even don't need gigabit. A Stadia stream ranges from 10Mbit to 50Mbit depending on the quality settings. Latency and other network users are far more influential on gameplay.
Looks like SteamLink only has a 100mbit/s NIC? People do often vastly overestimate how much bandwidth things need. The latest 4K HDR Blu-rays are easily streamable over 100mbit/s with a big enough buffer. A big buffer is no good for real-time gaming, of course, so they probably cap the peak bitrate to <100mbit/s which would be fine I imagine.
You might be surprised. There are still quite a few 100mbit/s NICs shipped in new things. It would save them a few pennies. Raspberry Pis only got gigabit NICs in 2018 and only usable at gigabit speeds in 2020. Pis are more capable than a lot of smart TVs I've seen.
1. Consumer broadband speeds rarely exceed 1Gbps
2. 1Gbps Local network transfers are seldom slowed by the network (as large file work typically involves HDD still)
3. Where local network transfers are impeded by the network speed the transferring itself isn't a frequent enough and blocking thing that people feel they need to fix it... they just go make a cup of tea once or twice a day
4. There are a lot of old network devices and cables out there, some built into the fabric of buildings (wall network sockets and cable runs)
5. WiFi is very very convenient, so much so that 250Mbps is good enough for almost anything and most people would rather be wireless at that speed than wired at a much higher speed (gamers and video professionals being an exception)
And ultimately, the cost and effort of investing in it doesn't produce an overwhelming benefit to people.
Even in quite large offices, it's hard to argue that this is worth it when the vast majority of people are just using web applications and very lossy audio and video meetings across the internet.