Gigabit Ethernet WHY???

[SocrPlyr]

just out of curiosity what could you do w/ a Gigabit Ethernet connection that you could do w/ 100Mbit... the setting for this card is a college. What can you really do w/ a gigabit to everyone's desktop, in every room??? in reality i think it is a stupid idea to give a college student that much bandwidth to play w/ i can see the slowdown already... also what kind of hops do you think are necessary between buildings to be able to handle that... (50, 100, 200Gbit???)
well this is kinda a rant because my college is putting it to the desktops and what really irks me is that they used fiber into every dorm room (the only reason to use fiber over copper is to hope that you won't have upgrade when you go faster, but when will you need more than 1000Gbit, anyways you have to spend around $200 for a card and a cable) i haven't found out what the hops between the buildings are but they better be huge... also just so you know they are connected through a hefty connection into the Internet2 (OC12 or so i think, that was the original plan anyways) oh well i just don't see the need for fiber to the dorm etc... seems like a waste of money...

Josh

 

[Fatt]

I would guess that they are running fiber to every room because funding approval is hard to come by and they are trying to "future proof" their project.

 

[Santa]

Guess you never worked for a university IT department. Funding comes everywhere on a use-it-or-lose it bases. You can only spend so much on a core router before there aren't options to buy. Why not try something new for kicks if you got the mula.

At least its not going into a more expensive toilet think about it that way..

 

[ScottMac]

They don't really have to worry much about bandwidth. Most (the vast majority) of the student PCs couldn't come close to pushing a gig of traffic anyway. Many would be lucky to push 200Mbps, by virtue of the 32 bit/33mhz PCI slots.

Is there only one fiber port per room? Are they offering a fiber gig / 10/100 switch to feed multiple PCs per room?

I'd think most students would be ecstatic to get that kind of bandwidth in the dorm ... I don't understand why you'd be p!ssed. Fiber? yeah? so what? It's a better medium anyway, and less likely to be fubar'd by a novice cable maker (well, actually more likely to be fubar'd, but fewer novice cable makers would attempt it....).

I dunno....kids these days .... give 'em a gig .... shrug ... I dunno... I don't get it.

Go whine at someone that's still forced to use 10-shared.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[MSantiago]

Usually people just run 100Mbit to individual computers and run fiber or gigabit when they want to bridge networks together. Gigabit ethernet isn't as expensive as you'd think, though. Gigabit ethernet can be used over cat5e cable, so if your college was already wired with that, they'd only need to replace the existing hubs with gigabit versions. And even if they had to run new cable, cat5e is pretty much the same price as regular cat5. There aren't many disadvantages to this approach -- even if people don't have gigabit ethernet cards, they can still use their current 10 or 100Mbit cards.

 

[SocrPlyr]

good throught about the funding coming at once, that makes sense, it is just odd that they had everything wired w/ cat5, which they ripped out (which can be used for gigabit), in my opion i would have found ways to hang onto the money until it is needed, but that is just my take.

what about the hops between dorms tho, those have to cost a fortune if they did them right...

oh by the way i was looking around their site and a bunch of the stuff seems to be from their old network and their old system hooked users via OC3 shots (155Mbits) and their bigger hubs had OC12 (622Mbit), if that was the case then i wonder what they are upgraded to now...

Josh

 

[SocrPlyr]

well i am kinda mad (not really but kinda) that they seem to me to have wasted a bunch of money and they want 200 bucks per semester for a tech fee and also i have to get my own network card and cable, which these aren't ones you can just pick up at bestbuy...

Josh

Edit: i did some checking around about the CAT5/E... and 5E is not necessary for gigabit... but it does help reduce distortion over longer cables... everything in the buildings now is fiber, if you don't have a fiber card you have to buy a copper to fiber converter...

 

[spidey07]

I applaud your schoold for putting in a strong cable plant. Buy using fiber they avoid tons of cable-related support costs.

It is a little expensive but the benefits outweigh the cost. Funny thing is gig ethernet will be too slow in a few years and we'll all be moaning about how slow 100 Base-T was.

 

[SocrPlyr]

good point spidey, but it won't be a while before we can really take advantage of the gigabit system because we need machines that support some kind of faster PCI bus... I know that theoretically the current bus is above the possible utilization of the gigabit card, but you also have to include that i have a sound card and other cards trying to go down that same tunnel... In reality i think i would have gone Dual AMD processors if i would have known about the gigabit only policy of the school, cuz at least then i could have gotten a 64bit pci slot to take full advantage of the card... (anyone wanna buy my rig off me, J/K)
Really my question is how much speed is really needed, take for instance my current connection through RoadRunner. 90% of the time i am limited by the servers on the other end (that percentage is low...). (if you want to know how i can tell this i'll give you some scenarios). Now the times i am not limited(capped) i am downloading at 350KByte/s (which is pretty darn fast, an uncompressed 700MB CD would download in 35min.) This is about 3Mbit/s. Well under what the 10Mbit/s card that i am connected to the modem with will handle.
Now lets say i am uncapping my line and putting in a 100Mbit/s connection. Since the line is uncapped i can take full advantage of the card, but since there is overhead on the ethernet we'll say it is at 80Mbit/s now my connection is over 26 times the speed it was. so for the ten percent of stuff i download it is 26 times faster, but now that isn't exactly true because very few of those servers are going to give me the full 80Mbps, and you have to remember on the other 90% i am still limited by the server on the other end.
ok now that i have said that, i am not against putting gigabit into the rooms, but how many years will it take before 100Mbit is maxed out... (we'll say 2 for the heck of it) now how many years after that is 1000Mbit going to last (lets say 6-7)
so down to my main point the only reason for putting in fiber is to allow future upgradability. This isn't really necessary for another 8 years or so... long after i have left the school, but i still have to foot part of the bill for something that won't be used for a much longer time... in reality what i am saying is for 30K+ a year i think they should be able to handle paying the $200 for my network card.

Josh

oh by the way all the returning students who didn't pay for their current setups don't have to pay to get their cards upgraded

 

[nightowl]

The only issue I see with running Gig Ethernet to dorm rooms is that one user can theoretically saturate the entire Internet connection. The school better have some type of throttling or packet shaping in place. Now this is not likely but I think that this is just too much bandwidth to one user let alone an entire dorm. Now, I can see stepping down to 100Mb to the desktop. You can still use the fiber too. The only reason I am saying this because I have seen time and time again where schools have to resort to bandwidth throttling or packet shaping to help reduce congestion on a Internet connection. Now, at Purdue there is only 10Base-T to each dorm room (2 drops per room) and there are still issues with bandwidth (Internet).

 

[Santa]

Just read an article about Arkansas State University doing this very thing.. your not talking about the same University are you?

Looks like Arkansas is using 10GBit at the core to allow 1GBit to the desktop.

It also says that each 10GBit port is running at only 1% utilization right now.

If one could get this type of budget passed through you too could have your network way outpace your PC bandwidth consumption.

Sounds like an IT geek's wet dream to be able to implement this much technology and watch it flourish.

Another thing that made sense to me beyond just the "use it or lose it" budget idea is that the Universitys are always in a fight for enrollment and professors. They will be advertising that they have this type of bandwidth availble so going with them would mean you were on the cutting edge.

Market thy network.. I know we do to our prospective clients

 

[Nutz]

Most likely he's talking about Case Western Reserve in NE Ohio.

 

[SocrPlyr]

Nutz is right... i am attending CWRU in Cleveland...
i've calmed down a bit tho cuz i found some used cards on ebay for $40, i installed it and it seems to be working fine (well w/o/ a net connection cuz i move in tomorrow...) but from what i can tell it will work... and i figured if i can get a few more i can buy a bunch of cables and sell them w/ a cable for like $100 and make a few bucks...

Josh

 

[Nutz]

Whats irritates me was I considered CWR back when I graduated highschool in 95. When I took a closer look they appreared to just be another scrub wannabe tech colloage and I setteled for a Kent State for a year (they were closer to my house since I was commuting). Oh well, it doesn't matter. I ended up joining the Air Force in 97 anyway.

 

[TurtleMan]

are u tripping , an intel gigabit nic is only 40 bucks ....... why $200...

 

[mobogasm]

yup, u can pick up a new gigabit intel card for $33+s/h i believe at their site.

 

[Sukhoi]

CWRU plans to use their gigabit ethernet for video over IP and other high-bandwidth uses. I believe their internet connection is 155 Mbps unless they have upgraded recently. So the gigabit is only the local LAN until it gets to their main router. Be happy you have 1 Gbps rather than 100 Mbps for local bandwidth.

 

[Sukhoi]

Originally posted by: mobogasm
yup, u can pick up a new gigabit intel card for $33+s/h i believe at their site.

Aren't those copper cards?

 

[nightowl]

Yes those Intel cards are copper. They won't work too well with fiber.

 

[Oaf357]

I totally agree with the University for running fiber to the desktop. Here's my thing though. Some of you folks are looking at it in a desktop to Internet point of view. Their running gigabit everywhere for YOU to talk to other nodes on the network. Not to sit there and surf the web. If they wanted Gig Internet connectivity then I'd say their crazy. OC-12 makes sense to me. Regardless as to whether or not your PC will fully utilize the full gig you should be happy to know that it's there and that pretty soon you'll be handing in labs, reports, etc. via that pipe.

As for what would interconnect buildings. I would say it would be gig all around. I doubt very seriously they'd go bigger to interconnect everything.

 

[Buddha Bart]

imagine this...

640x480 of a quality video stream
full-duplex audio from each node
"going to class" on your laptop in your underwear.

bart

 

[SocrPlyr]

Sukhoi
Are you kidding me? Their internet connections is a very large one much greater than 155Mbps... that was the speed of their old ATM speeds to the desktop (being replaced this year by the gigabit). I highly doubt the whole university has only 155Mbps, because they are a founding partner (or something like that) of the Internet2... the go straight into that backbone provided by OARnet if i remember correctly... anyways i don't thing that is right, the connection for any college would be pretty choked if they only had 155Mbps...

Turtleman and Mobogasm
you both must be "tripping" cuz you didn't even read my post... if you did it would be obvious to you that we are using fiber gigabit cards that are intended for server use (they only come in 64bit/66MHz, altho they run on 32bit/33MHz just fine)

Update about my situation.
The school decided to sell the cards at their cost to the students (at least for a while) they are going for $181, which isn't too bad...
but i bought a used one off of egay for $66 shipped 2Day and it works great... so i am thinking of asking around but most people bought theirs already...

Josh

 

[Kell]

Originally posted by: nightowl
Yes those Intel cards are copper. They won't work too well with fiber.

There are copper->fiber transceiver adapters made. Just stick it on your RJ45 socket and connect the multimode fiber to the other side.

I know AMP makes such a product. I don't remember how much they sell for though.

 

[lupohki]

WHY???

\\DARTH-SCSI\pr0n .. that's why.

 

[Nutz]

Media converters are only so good. Besides, the cost of one that'll support GigE would defeat the purpose,