Thoughts on 10Gbe home networks

heavydawson

With the advent of Siro providing 2gbps connections (https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/siro-2-gigabit-fibre-broadband-kilkenny) , and NBI scheduled to offer a 2gpbs wholesale product from Jan 2022 (https://nbi.ie/service-provider-portal/NBI%20Product%20Roadmap%2008.10.2021%20(1).pdf), I'm wondering if people here have started thinking beyond the standard gigabit ethernet home networking setup?

XGS-PON will scale to 10gpbs, but there's no timeframe on many years that will take to rollout to the consumer via the wholesalers.

Some concrete implementation details have emerged about Wifi 7 in recent weeks:

https://www.techspot.com/news/92312-mediatek-plans-demo-wifi-7-first-time-ces.html

, including theoretical speeds up to 40gpbs.

And before anyone points out the obvious (that the vast majority of clients are fast/gigabit ethernet), this isn't a question of whether it's a good idea in the short term. I'm just curious if others are planning any upgrade beyond their existing wired gigabit ethernet setups for home? Any if anyone has, can they offer any equipment suggestions? I've been eyeing the Netgear XS724EM (24 x 10Gbe Managed Switch) for a long time, but the price (~ 1700 Euros) deters me.

TCP/IP

I have 10gb in the house using an Aruba setup, Wifi is currently on Wi-fi6 soon to be upgraded to 6e once I can get replacement AP's.

heavydawson

@TCP/IP which specific Aruba gear are you using. I was vaguely familiar with them, but looking at their product lineup is bewildering to say the least.

KeRbDoG

My Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro (UDM Pro) can support a 10Gbe internet connection so I'm ready for more nets speeds :D

I already have 10Gbe links between the main switches around my house and 10Gbe local server connections. Whenever 1Gbe+ internet hits, I'm not planning on having the additional bandwidth available for wifi but for the wired desktops/servers. I'm tired of chasing that wifi dragon for more speed to just being happy with good speed and coverage without having APs in every second room/space :)

Edit: I just saw that (Open)Eir are touting 2Gbps FTTH coming soon also, 2Gbps down with 200Mbps up

https://www.openeir.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/NGA-Product-Description-Virtual-Unbundled-Access-V10_0-Marked-25102021.pdf

Edit2: Looks like Eir are already installing HN8010Ts XGS-PON ONT units

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117618549/#Comment_117618549

heavydawson

Yeah, NBI are launching a 2gbps product this quarter also according to their roadmap (and offer docs):

https://nbi.ie/service-provider-portal/

Cuddlesworth

Outside of some niche use cases, it's a waste of money for a multitude of reasons.

Actual bandwidth requirements have been decreasing, not increasing in the last few years.Workloads are/have moved to SAAS solutions, where the data is stored within a closed environment such as a remote VM or through a web browser in a external service like office 365.

Video services have been scaling traffic downwards(auto-resolution without control) and compression protocols have decreased bandwidth requirements'(h264 to h265).

Also, bandwidth doesn't scale linearly with the number of users, eg: 50mbps might get congested often in a 5 person household but 500mbps can do a site with hundreds of people. This is to due with the usage of mainly TCP in applications and burst traffic spread across lots of people. Same reason that bandwidth to your house is contended on pretty high ratios but most people don't ever notice. Once you get past that breaking point for high usage periods, your all good as a provider.

10gig copper is power hungry and unreliable on existing cabling. It's why its basically being sidelined by the creation of the auto negotiating 2.5 + 5 standard, which are starting to see mainstream adoption. And that's actually being lead by wireless adoption, which has started to hit the 1gig cap on uplinks. not wired networks in themselves. Because wireless = multiple users per cable, instead of a single device where 1 gig is a perfectly fine for day to day usage.

10gig itself starts the process of hitting other bottlenecks, which is a headache in itself for providers. Trying to explain that the download isn't hitting 10 gig because the server can't, underground cable can't handle the burst traffic that size, or even the person's own system can't handle the bandwidth isn't easy.

And so on, I could write a thesis on this. If you can get 10gig for basically the same cost as 500mbps-1gig I would get it sure. Otherwise its just wasting money. Same as a person buying a porche to sit in traffic all day, or a 2k graphics card to play minecraft. Yeah its great but for the money you spend on it, the time its actually used, its really just a waste.

ECO_Mental

Just built a house and have CAT6 run everywhere, I use a UDMP and your basic 24 port POE switch. I also have the NBI 1 Gig package and the for the life of me I cant see how I would use 10G.

My thoughts are all this whoo ha about 10 gig etc is coming from you-tubers who in fairness are generating content with a lot of big 4k videos, this is all stored on there massive NAS drives so they are pushing around a lot of data. They are also uploading a lot so they need the bandwidth.

Yer man Linus tech Tips is the biggest culprit 🙄 every second video of his is about getting multi gig networking. I think hes up at 100gig networking now....

Anyway the previous poster said you are limited by the servers you are downloading from. I did a lot of downloading games over christmass onto my Xbox Series X and that topped out at around 500mbs and that was dowloading from I presume decent servers.

But I am ready for it....(need a fancier switch though)

heavydawson

Yeah, my plan is compromise on 2.5gbit gear for now. I have a 24 port gigabit switch, but I'll probably add a smaller 8-port multi-gig POE++ switch and run all the access points off that as well as having the gateway connected to it, while leaving the rest of the house (apart from my desktop with a 2.5 gbe port) on the old gigabit switch. I wired the house with Cat 6a when we built it thankfully.

Coincidentally, Mediatek were running demos of Wifi 7 yesterday:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/wi-fi-7-demos-begin-promising-speedy-connections-for-demanding-apps/

Really impressive (albeit theoretical) gains in performance.

Cuddlesworth

Think your missing the point.

Let's use this example, you can get

500mb for 50 quid a month

1gig for 75 quid a month

2gig for 100 quid a month

Worst case scenario I can think of right now for the normal home users, is a game install like COD warzone(180gigs).

Download times are roughly 52min, 26min, 13min. You would be paying the equivalent of 600 Euros a year difference(500mb to 2gig) so you could save 40 minutes on a large download which rarely occurs. Assuming you could get the full usage of the 2gig all the time.

The same applies to upgrading wireless(Wifi 5 is actually perfectly fine for the next while), upgrading switches/network cards or even motherboards to get to higher speeds. Its not worth it unless you have a very specific reason to need that bandwidth.

And one of the worst parts is that for the vendor, for the most part offering speeds past a certain point doesn't really cost them anything extra.

KildareP

I'm tempted but it's purely for bragging rights, not because it'll actually provide any net benefit! 😁

The main providers - Google, Microsoft, AWS - won't come close to consuming a 1Gbps link on a single transfer over the WAN, never mind 10Gbps.

Unless you're regularly producing video in 4K RAW at home then you're highly unlikely to choke a 1Gbps internal LAN either.

The only way I can currently max out a gigabit corporate line is by having multiple simultaneous transfers going in/out but that's not at all reflective of a typical residential use case - one, perhaps two, games consoles, a few streaming services on the go, maybe some large Windows updates happening in the background. Microsoft and Sony are not going to push content at you faster than a few hundred megabits.

Even speedtest servers - many of them are sat behind a 10Gbps connection so it's highly likely the speedtest server will become congested long before your individual line does.

heavydawson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118529560#Comment_118529560

Ah I see your point on the pure economics of it. It's obvious to me the only benefits in the short term are for larger downloads (primarily initial game loads and OS updates) and those will be few and far between. I suppose I'm thinking about maximising my investment for the medium term. I'd like to buy gear today that will last me for 10 years (which my existing gear has). To me the wifi improvements I'm more interested in are largely around signal reach,etc, rather than simply bandwidth.

The cost is interesting though. NBI's wholesale pricing is the following:

500Mb/s = €29.72

1 Gb/s = €34.72

2 Gb/s. = €39.72

, so there's only €10/month between the 500mbps and 2gps offerings. Of course, that won't constitute the final price to the consumer which will inevitably be higher, but I don't foresee the 2gbps option being 2x the cost of the 500gbps.

In fact if you look at the current pricing for Digiweb (https://digiweb.ie/nbi-ftth-broadband/), there's only a €5 difference between their 500 (€60) and 1gbps (€65) packages to the consumer, so their own cost to provide either package seems exactly the same. It's reasonably to assume that were they to roll out a 2gbs product it would probably retail at (€70)

It's easier to swallow the idea of paying an extra €120 a year to go from 500 -> 2000 mbps for me, but each to their own :-)

I should add that I'm already setup with a dual-ISP configuration (FWH + Mobile Broadband) and so my monthly bill is already €80 between them. I'll technically be saving money even if I go for the 2gpbs option (and assuming my pricing extrapolation pans out) :-D

The more laughable aspect of this is the fair usage policy caps. If Digiweb stuck to their current 3TB/month cap, and you were downloading something at the full 2gbps, you'd hit the cap in 3 hours 40 mins :-D

brav

If your a big tech enthusiast and just like the idea of having more than 1 Gb/s then splashing out now on infrastructure and equipment for 2.5Gb/s or 10Gb/s then maybe you could justify it.

But for 99% 1Gb/s is plenty to cover the next 5 years, and in 5 or 7 years when you probably have replace equipment, you could get 10Gb/s much cheaper and more practical at that stage.

I think the biggest improvement besides bandwidth is the latency with fibre so even the 500Gb/s will be getting that.

I do have a 10Gb/s link between 2 of my switches in my house, but can't see me 'needing' more than 1Gb/s to the outside world in next 5 years. (currently waiting for NBI, have 2xCellular connections right now)

theteal

I've not even enabled WiFi 6 on the home router (Asus AX88u) as we have no compatible devices. We've just a had a free bandwidth upgrade to 200mbps - 100 has been fine for the last 5 years. The road is 1gig enabled but there's just no need, not worth the extra money (currently £45 with a decent telly package) - maybe when the kids are older and I finally get around to patching up all the bedrooms.

I don't think this thread is for me. . . .

heavydawson

https://twitter.com/NatBroadbandIrl/status/1486322729397665801?s=20

Now to wait for the retail prices.........

Capt'n Midnight

More on Wiffy 7

Based on the IEEE 802.11be standard, the draft version of which was published last year, Wi-Fi 7 is expected to provide speeds several times faster than Wi-Fi 6 kit, offering connections of at least 30Gbps and possibly up to 40Gbps.

To future proof run ducts that can take fibre and Cat N to where you'll need it.

Comments :

Does it go through brick walls?

How well does it go through brick walls? Because if the answer isn't like a hot knife through butter then it won't ever become the backbone of my home or replace my ethernet cables.

A solution that requires a buying expensive kit for every room is not a suitable replacement for cheap cable.

15 0 Reply

Re: Does it go through brick walls?

>A solution that requires a buying expensive kit for every room is not a suitable replacement for cheap cable.

No that would be silly, how would you connect them ?

The proper solution is a hammer drill and add some radio-wave access portals to the walls

4 0 Reply

Re: Does it go through brick walls?

>The proper solution is a hammer drill and add some radio-wave access portals to the walls

The first time I've ever heard "install windows" suggested as a credible solution to an IT problem.

36 0

heavydawson

Ended up dialing back my ambitions :-D

Netgear launched a fanless 2.5gbe Poe/Poe+ 8 port switch at CES ( https://www.netgear.com/ie/business/wired/switches/plus/ms108eup/ ), so I picked one of those up. I already installed up a 2.5gbe PCIe card for the desktop (and I'm running a Asus RT-AX86U with 2.5gbe port already). Will pick up a couple more PoE AX Access points over the next year.