Why are we using 2.5G and not 10G?

Networking
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I am looking for a answer how was this allowed /possible to have 10G networking and allow all these companies to curse us with 2.5G networks?
Why is no one suing them for downgrading / holding back technology?
U say day bay day 10G NIC card getting discontinued from support but the same company is not promoting 2.5G NIC’s.
On the Market the price of 10G Switch was replaced with 2.5G and the price for a 10G Switch went up, how was this allowed ?
How I see it next will be not to sell us 10G but the next step will by 5G and possibly in the next 10 years will get finally back to 10G.

Saying we don’t need 10G because is to fast or we can use it to me it is the same as saying we don’t need Cars a Cart with 2 Horse is OK it does the Job.

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I went directly to 25G. While all the news was news was focused about the GPU shortage earlier this year when I’ve built my new system, I noticed that the market was also very dryed out of high(er) speed network cards. I got lucky and found 2 used Mellanox lx4 on some local 2ndhand market place.
So the increased prices could also be due to shortage and general economic situation.

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2.5g runs on legacy CAT5e cable so it enables a 2.5x data throughput increase without requiring running new cable.

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And not having to re-run all wiring in an office is a viable business decision.

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Its like having run fiber, swap out the optics on either side, get more bandwidth.

ran CAT5e, swap out the electronics on either end, and poof 2.5g bandwidth.

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I would say it’s a combination of the prices of 10GbE controllers being high, taking more resources and more die area to make and the latest chip shortages since the you know what that shall not be named.

Back in 2012 when 10G was hitting the mainstream (or that’s when I know it kinda did, my knowledge ain’t perfect), the power consumption on 10GBase-T was huge compared to fiber. So people tended to stay away from Ethernet, they went straight to fiber. But not everyone was happy with fiber, re-running cables is costly.

Later on, the 10GbE controllers got more practical, but by that time, we already developed NBase-T around 2016 and developed 2.5GbE controllers that are similar in size with 1Gbps controllers and use about the same power.

Additional reasons why 10GbE didn’t make it into mainstream was that, because of its larger size required on a PCB, device manufacturers just stayed on 1Gbps for a long time, delaying people from upgrading to fiber. By the time 10GbE NBase-T controller caught up with lower power consumption (about 7W, which is still massive compared to gigabit), it was already too late, most enterprise businesses already went to 40G and even 100G. Some cheaper 25G can be found today too. All of them use fiber.

10G was kinda plagued from the start. Not the fiber ones, but the copper ones, most early 10G were fiber, because they used less power and had other advantages, like longer wire runs.

Now, consumer devices are barely starting to see 2.5GbE hitting the mainstream because the consumer tech has advanced enough to allow those to be mass adopted. But many ISPs in countries that are not burgerland, are upgrading their residential customers to FTTH gigabit and preparing the infrastructure for future speeds, while ISPs over here are milking coaxial some more and some even DSL.

Considering the price of 10G today, I am gladly embracing 2.5GbE. While true that had the 2.5GbE tech not been developed, we may have seen 10G adoption earlier (probably non-RJ45). But the ethernet one would have been costly in the long run, because of its power consumption. You don’t want the climate to change, do you, anon?

As mentioned, I am in the market for a 2.5Gbps dual port PCI-E x1 or x4 Intel NIC. The i-225 is expensive at $100 and the x540 and x550 (the former which doesn’t even support NBase-T) are $300. And the newer x710 is $500 for a dual port, that is insane. So if anyone has any recommendation, let me know.

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As a side note: When I did go through my old collection of ethernet cables (I was running on wireless before the fiber upgrade) I noticed that practically every cable had at least one connector’s tab broken off). I hope the connectors on fiber cables are more stable. So far I didn’t break any connectors but I’ve only had them for about 6 months now.

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They are (depending on the connector type) but fibre was never designed to be constantly moved around. It is more of a set it and forget it solution. If you are going to be moving fiber around, you may want to look at DAC instead since it is fibre.

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Not to forget CAT8 can do some 40Gbps, so why even bother with 10 or 25. Just finding hardware that supports these speeds is well, a dream. The prices for me are just too high to justify the hardware to support the speeds but I will still be laying only CAT7 at minimum and CAT8 or even CAT9 when possible, marking it in an excel table and reminding me to change everything out to newer standards.

Also if you can, just go fibre, have the converter in your PC and Router(Opensense).

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Yeah, I just ran some multi-mode fiber and said eff it. I bough Mikrotik switcheds with SFP+ cages and use the fibre as the backbone. Then I have switches that convert the fiber to 8 Gbps port. I wish Mikrotik had switches that broke out to 2.5Gbps at least but… I am using media converters for the two Engenius 377 WAPs since they are 2.5Gbps

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Lol same, I ran 24 SM strands from my rack to my office, cant afford to terminate it yet, but I will be this year.

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I cheated and used pre-terminated cables. I was going to cheat and used the fast connectors with the epoxy and everything in them but those jokers are like 10 - 25 USD per connector and I would still need a cleaver and a few other things to clean the ends. Yeah the pre-terminated cables were more expensive but came out to be cheaper than bare cables, plus cleaver, plus cleaning supplies, plus connectors.

If I would have use the traditional connectors then I would have to invest in a mini meth… I mean chemistry lab too.

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I got the cable for free from a local SI who I am friendly with, but it means terminating myself.

I dont mind buying a cleaver but man, factory polished connectors are $$$. so both ends of my cable to be terminated is like $750 in connectors only.

Tempted to just go anaerobic and hand polish
A. because its cheap,
B. because I can,
C. because street cred

I will be running some pre-terminated multi-mode because my USB extenders only run on MM, but I figured that made sense.

I am looking forward to reclaiming a bunch of my CAT6 once all the fiber goes in/is terminated.

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DO IT!

If you hone the skill, you can pretty much name your price if you decide to look for a career change. I have done it a few times under someone’s tutelage but I have never needed to run Fibre in my normal career.

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Meh, I already get paid well and I dont have to work in a fiber hut. I did fiber and LV in my early 20’s and it was awesome, got paid bank for no college degree.

These days I get to sit in my home office and do my part of $3bn construction designs.

So unless I could make 200k+ im not going back into the field.

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10G cards are no joke they eat power produce a ton of heat and aren’t cheap. makes alot of sense that companies dont want to touch it yet 10G laptop adapters look like old school xbox360 power bricks because of the cooling they need not to mention you also need cpu power to actually utilize that speed and most machines consumer machines can’t get close.

my point is 10G is to much for a normal consumer and enterprise is already at 100G plus i think if anything 10G will be abandoned

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10GbE (copper) cards are under $100. Adjusting for inflation, that’s cheaper than 1GbE cards were at when they started getting integrated into higher-end mobos and then quickly filtered down the line to the lower-end as well.

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I see old 10G cards on eBay that are PCIe 2.0 x8, support even Windows XP, and are quite cheap too. 1G and now 2.5G are probably the standard since consumer internet has been kinda slow to follow. (At least in the United Shit of America, my internet is the fastest I can get and doesn’t even saturate 802.11g) 10G+ has been basically relegated to businesses either due to needing fast internal and/or external connections that consumers don’t need, and companies are taking advantage of that. It’s not really something you can sue for due to governments being useless. However due to 10G being kinda old, you can get decent used prices on older hardware and have the added benefit of compatibility with older systems too.

Also on the topic of this, the predecessor to my board has 10G, meanwhile my board only has 1G. Technology, take one step forward and take two steps back.

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See this is why I’ve debated running fiber in my eventual home to everything and I know it’s expensive. But the reality is all I have to do is swap the ends out for the optics and bingo bango bongo I got more speed

It seems economical over the 20-year time frame :joy:

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In addition, 1G is super cheap to tac onto a motherboard if the controller isn’t already included in the CPU package

And as far as including it in a CPU package, silicon space is premium, smaller less complex controllers means less wasted space

It’s the lowers common denominator

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