Ethernet. Burn? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: PerranOak
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2020, 03:46:14 pm
content: So, I now have fast (for us) Internet. I've clocked the d/l speed on the iPad at 450Mb/s, tops.On my desktop, the Wireless Adapter is a Qualcomm QCA9565 802.11b/g/n that should connect at 144/72 Mb/s though I understand that I need to halve these for comparison purposes. However, I routine get only 50Mb/s download on it even though it's just ten feet and a thin plasterboard wall away.Anyway, I though it would be fun to run and Ethernet cable (via neat wall sockets) between desktop and router. When looking at the Ethernet controller, Windows 10 reports it as a Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller - no other detail. Looking this up it seems that it can connect at 1000Mb/s which would be good even if I have to halve that?However, there is some question on the web about whether they really can run this fast. I don't want to cut holes in the walls and get no better speed!How can I verify the likely connection speed before committing?Cheers.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 03, 2020, 03:55:07 pm
content: Wired connection provides almost all of the rated speed and in both ways simultaneously.

author: PerranOak
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2020, 04:33:02 pm
content: Great, cheers.BTW is the correct socket this one (from Amazon): “VCE CAT 6 Universal Network Socket rj45 tested to the EIA/TIA standard”?

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2020, 04:35:34 pm
content: Plug in a cable and try it!Provided the cable isn't too long, the link should come up at 1 Gbps. It doesn't get slower with longer cables, unless you're right at the limit of the maximum cable length your equipment can support (should be ~100m in theory). Just grab yourself a cable that's long enough to run from your PC to your cable modem, and see if you notice a worthwhile difference. If you do, then it's worth installing the wiring, and if not, then it isn't.I've just been through a similar exercise myself, and now have an Ethernet switch in my loft which provides a wired 1 Gbps connection between the office (where the cable modem is situated), my lab, and my lounge - the 3 places where I have bandwidth hungry equipment. The switch is powered via PoE, so no need for a mains socket in the attic.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2020, 06:25:02 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on December 03, 2020, 03:55:07 pmI regularly get 100 MB/s or close each way simultaneously on my 1 Gb/s wired Ethernet network with a variety of adapters.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2020, 06:55:48 pm
content: There must be a bottleneck or other issue, then. A 1Gb/s link really, really is always 1Gb/s on the wire - it's not physically possible for it to be anything else. Gigabit Ethernet isn't "up to" a gigabit, it's a gigabit or no connection at all.The first thing I'd do is check that the link layer really has come up at 1 Gbit. If you're using a cable that's on the limit in terms of signal integrity (very long, poor quality, damaged or mis-wired), the PHY in your PC and/or connected device might fall back to 100BaseTx.There's no guarantee that any particular device is able to keep up with the speed of the wire. Are you connected to a switch that has other devices also plugged in? Could there be a significant amount of other traffic that the switch's CPU has to cope with? Not all switches are "non-blocking", ie. traffic between one pair of ports doesn't affect traffic between others. Some switches, especially older ones, have an aggregate throughput limit which is less than (number of ports) * (max link speed per port).If that's not it, then maybe the device you're ultimately talking to just isn't that fast, and the Ethernet link speed isn't the issue.It could also be a protocol issue; a badly configured MTU somewhere can cause a great deal of packet fragmentation, retransmission and loss, all of which can cripple the useful throughput of the interface. A session with Wireshark could be time very well spent to see if this is happening on your network.

author: fordem
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2020, 08:45:31 pm
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on December 03, 2020, 06:55:48 pmIf you're responding to the post directly above - please note the change in units - 100MB/s is pretty close to 1Gb/s.Having pointed that out - having a 1Gb/s link connected at 1Gb speed does not guarantee 1Gb/s throughput - you need to look at the source & destination of the transfer - I've watched transfers to servers with RAID5 arrays clock 800 Mb/s on small transfers (less than the RAID card cache size) and drop to 200~300 on larger transfers (after the cache fills up), and one of the consumer grade NAS I owned a few years back had a 1Gb/sec interface and could not transfer data faster than around 180 Mb/s because the disk interface was simply too slow.Last - in my experience - a 1Gb/s NIC does not guarantee Gb/s speed, even in cases where the source & destination are not the bottleneck - I tend to avoid Realtek products because they just don't deliver - 1 Gb/s add-in NICs with PCI interfaces could not handle more than 120 Mb/s - swapping them out for a 3Com card allowed roughly double that, I also owned a "business class" desktop built by one of the top three manufacturers whith 1Gb/s LOMB that delivered less than 100 Mb/s, and if you've every used a USB-to-Gb/s adapter, you'll find they are limited by the available bandwidth on the USB side.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2020, 09:58:19 pm
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on December 03, 2020, 06:55:48 pmPacket loss can cause variable data rates. Connections between my old Netgear GS108T switch and my newer TP-Link TL-SG108E switches had packet loss problems which I could only resolve by replacing the Netgear.I have not tested it in detail myself but with Windows 10, the continuous scanning of file copies by the security system has a major effect on the maximum throughput.Quote from: fordem on December 03, 2020, 08:45:31 pmMy old Netgear ReadyNAS usually gets about 30 MB/s but sometimes holds 100 MB/s for 10 or 15 seconds so I am not sure why.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 04, 2020, 01:27:51 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on December 03, 2020, 09:58:19 pmPacket loss in ethernet means you have a faulty connection. Not necessarily it was Netgear issue, it might be a too long or bad cable. And another device was more tolerant to it.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2020, 02:58:31 am
content: Quote from: wraper on December 04, 2020, 01:27:51 amAll tests showed a problem between the Netgear and TP-Link switches no matter what cable was used, and no problem with the cable unless the Netgear switch was using it. It may very well be that the Netgear and TP-Link combination was less tolerant of cable issues, but no cable issues were found with any other combination and the best solution was to replace the Netgear switch.Beyond observably poor throughput, these switches all have management functions which allowed tracking bad packets making diagnostics unambiguous.

author: PerranOak
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2020, 10:12:56 am
content: Is CAT6 the one to get?

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2020, 11:37:56 am
content: Quote from: PerranOak on December 04, 2020, 10:12:56 amFor 1000BASE-T (Gigabit Ethernet), CAT5e is sufficient but given the small if any increase in price now, I do not think there is any reason not to use CAT6 or CAT6A.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2020, 11:56:32 am
content: That question isn't easy to answer. It depends on what your are planning for the future. CAT5e is fine for 1000Base-T and 2.5GBase-T. 5GBase-T works too with shorter cable runs (<70m?), also 10GBase-T (<50m). CAT6 is a safe bet for up to 5GBase-T, while also limited to 50m for 10GBase-T. For running 10GigE at full segment length you'd need CAT6A. Be aware the higher the CAT rating is, the more effort it takes to install it.My personal opinion is that TP wire is fine for 1GigE and the new 2.5/5G "power ups". Short cable runs at home might be OK for 10GigE, but for anything beyond that I'd use fiber (multimode OM3 or 4).

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2020, 11:58:50 am
content: Beware of CCA and CCS cable (copper clad aluminum and steel). Neither are fit for purpose as network wiring. The easiest way of spotting them is with a magnet for CCS and by flame test for CCA.To flame test solid core ethernet cable, strip a wire totally and hold the core with pliers with 1" protruding past the flame.You need pure copper CAT5e or better cable. Make sure its described as copper and if it isn't return it! Suspiciously cheap cable is rarely genuine.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2020, 12:15:09 pm
content: Quote from: madires on December 04, 2020, 11:56:32 amI would actually avoid 10GBASE-T (10G Ethernet over CAT6 and CAT6A cable) because of the high cost of the hardware compared to SFP+ interfaces which can use relatively less expensive copper cables for shorter distances and fiber for longer ones. Maybe 10GBASE-T will eventually come down in price but right now it is the more expensive solution.

author: PerranOak
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2020, 01:06:43 pm
content: Sorry, I don’t understand half the words used above.The cable between sockets will only be about 6m long. However, if I had to use a made-up cable to test it it would be more like 20m - sounds expensive.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2020, 01:27:59 pm
content: Quote from: PerranOak on December 05, 2020, 01:06:43 pmUnless you know someone in the network installation business who can do you a deal on the remnant of a reel, or better yet can do the whole job at 'mate's rates', your first problem will be finding a reputable supplier for Cat6 cable by the metre, otherwise you'll be stuck buying a 50m reel for a price not much less than a 100m reel.

author: Syntax Error
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2020, 03:11:19 pm
content: Perran, I think as David Hess was eluding to, over very short distances < 10m, 1000baseT works just as well with Cat5 as Cat6 rated connectors/cable. In practical terms for a domestic network, you will notice zero difference. Afterall, the internet protocol is designed to deal with dropped packets. But in 2020, cat6 parts only cost pennies more than cat5. Choose cat6 because it's future proof.If you want Cat6 cable, connectors, etc, pop over to ebay. Plenty of UK sellers selling network leads of all types and lengths. And check out cool *flat* cat6 leads, which are ideal for running under carpets and behind TVs.If you don't already have one, buy a RJ45/RJ11 network cable continuity tester - with the green leds. It will save you hours of stress for years to come. Around £10-15.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2020, 03:46:44 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on December 04, 2020, 12:15:09 pmI fully agree. However, at home some people prefer to keep using their old wiring and spend more on active components than thinking about a new wiring.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2020, 04:19:45 pm
content: Quote from: Syntax Error on December 05, 2020, 03:11:19 pmCAT5e! That little 'e' is quite important. And you can run 1000BASE-T on up to 100m CAT5e. Of course, you can also use anything better, like CAT6, but you'll pay more without gaining much for home use. BTW, if an ethernet link is broken TCP/IP can't do anything about that.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2020, 05:16:59 pm
content: Quote from: madires on December 05, 2020, 04:19:45 pmYou don't need the 'e' for gigabit at 100m - it was originally specified for cat5.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2020, 06:33:29 pm
content: From a specification standpoint you're right and many CAT5 cables even meet the CAT5e specifications. From a practical standpoint things look a little bit different. Back then when GigE was standard in data centers we saw issues with long runs of some Cat5 cables and those cables met CAT5 specs (tested). CAT5e performed more solid. Also, CAT5 is obsolete for many years.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2020, 06:46:54 pm
content: Quote from: madires on December 05, 2020, 06:33:29 pmCrosstalk issues in cable bundles have approximately no relevance to normal home usage.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2020, 06:51:40 pm
content: There's also crosstalk between the four pairs in one cable.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2020, 06:54:11 pm
content: Quote from: madires on December 05, 2020, 06:51:40 pmWell, this is true. Again, house, short runs in almost all cases, and also, as you pointed out, where does one find cat5 these days?

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2020, 08:52:24 am
content: Installing CAT6 or CAT6a is not much more expensive than CAT5e and leaves open the possibility of 2.5GBASE-T, 5GBASE-T, and 10GBASE-T. I find 1000BASE-T (Gigabit Ethernet) rather limiting at this point.However 10GBASE-T hardware, except for the CAT6 or CAT6a cable, is still expensive, and 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T hardware is not commonly available. There are some relatively inexpensive 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T NICs and USB3 adapters which might be useful, but the USB3 adapters have a tendency to overheat.For applications where shorter range, like within a room, is acceptable, SFP+ is less expensive, and long range SFP+ using fiber is a possibility.

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2020, 11:08:17 am
content: Practical tips for running CAT ethernet:1. The wallplates are often used with"keystones". In my country (Australia) you can get keystones that fit into the exact same plastic parts as light switches ("wall plates"), but this varies depending on your area.I can never remember the word "keystone", instead I end up searching catalogs & the web for "tombstone" all the time and end up very confused.2. If you choose CAT5e cable then only use CAT5e keystones and CAT5e crimps. Similar for CAT6 cable: use only CAT6 keystones and CAT6 crimps.If you use the wrong type then they can be very hard to punch/crimp and (in my experience) are mechanically unreliable afterwards. Note that CAT5e and CAT6 keystones & crimps look very similar. Each CAT standard has different wire thicknesses.3. Don't use cheap greymarket (ie eBay) crimps and keystones if you can avoid them. They are much harder to get reliably punched/crimped, even though they look exactly like more expensive units. The differences are tiny but matter a lot. I leaned this the hard way (it was _very_ confusing until I worked out the differences like pin thickness) and some of my cheap crimps are now corroding (very bad gold plating).4. Cheap plastic punchdown tools (no moving parts) work fine for doing a few keystones. They're a bit fiddly but they're OK (and much better than trying to improvise with flat-bladed screwdrivers and pliers). One of these should cost almost nothing.5. Your country may have some laws & practices regarding data cabling. In Australia anything that's "in a wall cavity" technically requires a registered cabler (IIRC from reading the relevant laws a while back). YMMV.6. As others have mentioned: beware Mb vs MB and Gb vs GB. Maximum actual throughput on a 1Gb ethernet link varies from approximately 800ish to 900ish Mbit/s depending on the brand & design of network card.In my country: almost no household internet connections are above 100Mb/s and almost all home routers can't even hit 100Mb/s except under very specific circumstances (hardware offloaded NAT with no special rules). I regularly saturate my gigabit LAN when doings tranfers between my PCs, however.7. Testing your work is easy: connect a computer at each end and they will tell you the maximum speed they managed to negotiate (eg 1000Mbit/s or 100Mbit/s). If you are getting 100 instead of 1000 then you have probably miss-crimped a wire/pair or two.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2020, 11:59:33 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on December 06, 2020, 08:52:24 am... as CAT5e does, just with shorter cable runs.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2020, 12:18:19 pm
content: Quote from: Whales on December 06, 2020, 11:08:17 amThe older inexpensive TP-Link routers with a single core CPU running at roughly 600MHz do 250 - 300Mbit/s NAT with OpenWrt and even more with the original firmware supporting the SoC's hardware NAT. If a router doesn't even exceed 100Mbit/s NAT is must be a very cheap and/or quite old one.

author: PerranOak
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2020, 04:44:53 pm
content: ... so,ALLnetwork cards, once "ethernetted" will operate to at least my ISP download limit of 500Mbps?

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2020, 07:28:18 pm
content: ... when they are 1000BASE-T, the LAN ports of your router too, and the router is able to handle 500Mbit/s.

author: PerranOak
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2020, 10:06:06 pm
content: Ah. So, they said I could go up to 900Mbps (if I pay!) so it couldn’t handle that?

author: fordem
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2020, 02:59:48 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on December 06, 2020, 08:52:24 amI can't help but be curious as to what you're doing that you find GbE to be the limiting factor.In my experience, a shift from 10/100 to GbE does not provide a significant improvement for common office tasks - several years back one of my clients was moving to a new location and we took the opportunity to upgrade the LAN infrastructure, from the existing 10/100 to GbE - all that was changed was the cabling & switches - the existing servers and some of the desktops had GbE, other desktops were 10/100 - we timed the opening of the client-server application, the reduction in wait time was less than five seconds, reduction in opening time for MS Word or Excel documents from a shared folder was not measurable.I have no doubt that there are specific tasks that might see a worthwhile improvement, engineering, architecture, graphic design, but, how many users are likely to be running those tasks in a home environment?That was my first GbE installation and between then & now, I've done many more, large & small, banks & retail businesses - I've not yet seen a reason to go faster than 1 Gbe to any client station. I have, on larger installations, run 2x1 GbE LAGs between switch closets, more out of an abundance of caution, because we're not passing enough traffic on the LAG to saturate one of the links, one installation, where we have OLTP data, VoIP & IP surveillance was actually configured with 4x1 GbE links, designed to be run as two separate LAGs, just in case, turned out why we didn't need it.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2020, 03:48:59 am
content: I have some older laptops where the bottleneck is the PCI bus or the hard drive. My more modern systems really do transfer close to and occasionally above 100MB/s over the gigabit network. It's about twice as fast as the fastest I've ever seen from WiFi.

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2020, 06:54:10 am
content: Quote from: PerranOak on December 06, 2020, 10:06:06 pmMy numbers are approximate, YMMV. Test before throwing money at them. Also beware the overheads of UDP/TCP and the various ATM/PPPoE/etc framing strategies that different ISPs use.Sidenote:buffer controlsare worth reading up on too.QuoteBackups are the big one for me. Eg 40 gigabytes takes 6ish minutes instead of an hour. (If it's easier then you're more likely to do it)

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2020, 11:36:30 am
content: Quote from: PerranOak on December 06, 2020, 10:06:06 pmThe important point is that your router is able to handle the traffic throughput (Internet traffic incl. NAT and firewall). If you have 1Gbit/s Internet access and Gigabit Ethernet in your LAN then your PC is able to use the maximum throughput of your Internet access. If your LAN is only Fast Ethernet then your PC can download files with 100Mbit/s (minus overhead) at maximum, but another 9 PCs could do that too at the same time.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2020, 05:50:47 pm
content: Quote from: madires on December 06, 2020, 07:28:18 pmJust to be clear, "routing" includes traffic between the LAN and WAN ports. If you have several computers connected to the LAN ports on a router, then their traffic between themselves is actually through a switch and not the router part of the router and should only be limited by the speed of the Ethernet connections and the computers themselves.Traffic which must be routed between the WAN and LAN ports is usually limited by the processing performance of the router. My old FreeBSD based router on a 500 MHz Pentium 2 could barely route between ports at 100 Mb/s. My old Linksys routers could only handle about 30 Mb/s between the WAN and LAN ports.Quote from: fordem on December 07, 2020, 02:59:48 amBulk file transfers between systems now completely saturate my Gigabit Ethernet and impact the performance of any other traffic over that network including much slower internet traffic and local Remote Desktop Protocol traffic. Some of my systems are multi-homed with separate network connections to a secure local only network and a private network with access to the internet. For them with bulk transfers over the secure local only network, traffic on the other interface is not affected.QuoteIt makes a big difference for bulk file transfers and I have also noticed a significant improvement in the performance of Remote Desktop Protocol. With Gigabit Ethernet, I can play video on a remote system without it being apparent that access is through RDP. Before with 100Mb/s Ethernet, the video would tear or stutter.QuoteUp until recently I used 100 Mbit/second Ethernet on my internet accessing network and Gigabit Ethernet on my secure local network for file transfers. Both networks are updated now to Gigabit Ethernet but I am looking into how to upgrade my secure local network to something faster.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2020, 09:39:20 pm
content: Quote from: PerranOak on December 06, 2020, 10:06:06 pmGigabit ethernet will obviously handle 900Mbps internet service. In most cases the bottleneck will be your router. I have gigabit fiber to my house and even one of the faster consumer routers I could find needs to have whatever they call their acceleration feature enabled and even then it can "only" push 800-900Mbps which is measurably slower than a direct connection from the ONT to my PC. Many older routers top out at 100-200Mbps.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2020, 10:07:39 pm
content: Quote from: fordem on December 07, 2020, 02:59:48 amI upgraded my home network from 100Mbps to gigabit several years ago because 100Mb was becoming woefully inadequate. Transfering a 8GB HD movie from my workstation to my media server would take ages, backing up a 8TB drive over the network would take weeks, even over gigabit it takes days, the limiting factor mostly being speed of the backup drive. If you have a link that feeds a switch connecting multiple clients it's even easier to saturate that uplink. It's very common these days for consumers and prosumers to be transferring many gigs of media files around, backing up workstations to NAS, and other data intensive operations. Now with gigabit internet becoming fairly common and video streaming becoming the normal way to watch TV and movies at home it's very easy to saturate a 100Mb connection.I too upgraded simply by replacing my switches. I regularly hear people saying you need cat6 for gigabit but for the typical cable lengths found in a home or small office that just isn't true. If I were putting in runs that are hundreds of meters long I'd make sure to use cable that was up to spec but for home use I've never had an issue. I even have a few runs that are over ancient cat5 that was installed 15 years ago, not even e, I get reliable gigabit transfers over them.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 19, 2020, 11:30:16 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on December 03, 2020, 06:25:02 pmI just found out why I sometimes get 110 MB/s on my 1 Gb/s network. For a couple of years Windows has supported "multichannel" with SMB 3.0 which automagically uses more than one network link if available, which in my case included my 100 Mb/s network, so I was getting the combined speed of my separate 1 Gb/s network and 100 Mb/s network when doing file transfers. Up until now I thought the 110 MB/s measurement was in error but it was not.I only noticed now after finishing upgrading my 100Mb/s network to 1 Gb/s and getting file transfers of 200 MB/s which is plainly impossible on a 1 Gb/s network. I also noticed that both network adapters, one of which is connected through USB 3.0, were showing approximately the same traffic, which at first lead me to think something was broken.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 19, 2020, 03:15:55 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on December 19, 2020, 11:30:16 amWe'll just gloss over the fact that 1Gbps = 119.2MiB/s..

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 19, 2020, 07:23:32 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on December 19, 2020, 03:15:55 pmThe MII interface is 8 bits operating at 125 MHz so the data rate really is 1 Gb/s. The line rate using 4 channels of 5 level encoding at 125 MHz is 1,160,964,047.44 bits per second.