Ethernet is Still Going Strong After 50 Years::The technology has become the standard LAN worldwide

  • TaintPuncher@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    The only bad thing about Ethernet cables is that they’re shaped like a goddamn grappling hook. If I wanna pull an Ethernet cable through my desk, I must understand that every other cable in its path is coming with it.

            • havokdj@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              What about getting hot for your Ethernet cable?

              Your nice, long, sexy Ethernet cable? With that wide bandwidth? That low latency? I’m getting wet just thinking about it. Let’s LAN party ;)

        • atx_aquarian@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I always crimp my own, including using slide-on/slide-off hoods. That way I can back the hood off before plugging it into the port, which keeps it easy to disconnect, and I can slide it back on before pulling it through a tight spot.

    • You999@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Not to be that person but ethernet is the specification, the “grappling hook” you are referring to is the connector (Rj45 8p8c). Ethernet has a ton of different connectors in the spec from SFP to DE-9 and even HDMI.

  • RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Why not? I prefer a hard wired connection over wifi where possible any day. The speeds are more than adequate for 99.9% of needs, it’s pretty secure, what’s not to like?

    • macrocephalic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Tell me how you didn’t read the article…

      Wifi (802.11) is a type of ethernet. Ethernet is the communication specification not the medium.

  • kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Ethernet is gonna be, if its not already, one of those lifetime IEC standards that everyone has to support similar to how there are 20 different power plug standards, and someday USB will replace those. Boy, Ethernet over USB. That’ll be the day…

    250 years from now they’ll be running Cat6 in mega-spaceships because it works, and the error-correction will be good enough for cosmic ray noise.

  • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It works and supports bandwidth well beyond what the vast majority of usecases could ever saturate – and we get new iterations all the time which increase that ceiling. RJ45 connectors and their respective ports are everywhere. Sure, we have “better” types of cables and connectors for networking, but they’re almost always a staggering amount of overkill for the application and are not as common.

    • Eheran@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      When did RJ45 last got a relevant update? 1 Gb/s is more than 2 decades old. It is still way more than enough for almost everyone. And it does not need a lot of power to operate.

        • Eheran@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          How much power does that need to run? What does it cost? How many people could actually use that bandwidth? How does it generally compare to fiber optic?

          • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            It’s not about cost or outright performance. A cat6 patch cable is compatible with anything from a 10BASE-T intercom to a 10GBASE-T connection that can only be saturated with the most cutting-edge hardware (my desktop literally can’t write to its M.2 drive this fast!)
            So if I’m running wires through walls, I’m choosing cat6 because it’ll work for basically any device, rather than constraining myself to exotic SFP connectors on both ends.

            Fiber theoretically future-proofs you for 100GE, but let’s be real, that shit is HELLA expensive and literally no consumer hardware can benefit from it. Basically if your usecase requires fiber, you’ll know.

            • emptiestplace@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              I think you are confused. Any modern hardware can easily saturate 10Gbps - it’s only ~954MiB/sec.

            • Eheran@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              And what use case is there for a wired connection like this? Next to nobody needs that. I, engineer/gamer/PC enthusiasts/bla, know zero people who ran wires to their PC like I did, despite certain advantages with LAN in gaming. You can imagine how many people I know that not only run the wires but then also actually need more than the standard 1Gb/s.

              It is/would be a waste of resources and not needed for almost everyone. That is what I am saying. That is why we do not see any significant development in the last 20 years, it is still the same 1 Gb/s like back then.

              • WanderingCat@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                I’ve ran cat 6a in my home as when I’m sure to upgrade the devices I don’t want to have to redo all the cabling. I am looking at moving up from 1 Gb/s already as I can easily max out the connection when transferring data over the network, like a backup to a different system.

                Hell, I’m pretty sure we have ISPs here in EU thag offer 2Gb WAN.

                In terms of significant developments, more and more PCs are currently making the move to 2.5gb networking too

                • Eheran@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Maxing out 1 Gb/s was no issue with HDDs 15 years ago. Maxing out 10 Gb/s is no issue with SSDs today. 1 GB/s is nothing for them. You would need 100 GB/s to have a buffer for the next 3(?) years, then it will be maxed out again.

                  In any case, a backup can take 1 or 10 hours, seems irrelevant in a non-commercial environment. Since people will be backing up to large HDDs in the foreseeable future, 1 Gb/s is just fine. 18 TB HDDs could potentially be 2x faster, say 200 MB/s. Not much to gain.

                  On a side note, I put cat7 everywhere back in the day. Maybe 150 meters.

      • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        They are coming out with new cabling standards to allow multi gbps over extended distances. There is still a lot of room for growth. You are right that nothing more is needed for the average use case though.

  • ComradeWeebelo@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Why wouldn’t it be? I don’t understand the point of this article. It’s not like some other direct P2P communication medium is going to come along and upend it. It doesn’t really make sense to run fiber inside your home. You don’t need that kind of bandwidth for such a small number of devices and it would be prohibitively expensive since you need a specialized, highly trained technician to run it - unlike Ethernet, where any sufficiently motivated person can do so. I’ve heard that the people that run fiber for ISPs make something like $200/hr or so.

    • datelmd5sum@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Here welding fiber is part of pretty basic sparkie training. I’d be surprised if they’d make more than doctors.

    • felbane@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You’re saying “Ethernet” but what you mean is BASE-T (aka Cat5, Cat6, etc). Ethernet runs over fiber just as well as twisted pair copper.

      The OSI model says hi 👋

    • Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It falls under the low voltage // communications lines in most US states, so standard electricians union pay. It’s pretty good, but not $400,000 salary good.

    • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      One person wrote an article on it a few weeks ago and for some reason everyone clicked on it, so now similar articles are being written to capitalize on that success.

  • PhillyCodeHound@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    First thing that came to mind was that it clearly wasn’t developed by Google! Thank goodness. It’d be long dead.

    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      … Then we can reuse the solution, sprinkle some unnecessary features, and then resell it as the evolution of a thing and make a butt load of money