Now that we have 10Gbit/sec USB 3.1 Gen 2, why not 10GbE?

[VirtualLarry]

Just thinking, now that we have USB 3.1 Gen2 10Gbit/sec ports on mobos, why don't we have 10GbE silicon on mobos too?

Or at the very least, some affordable 10GbE adapters, that plug into USB 3.1 Gen2. Seems like the perfect match, no?

 

[pitz]

In a nutshell, the physical media interfaces (ie: PHYS) are still pretty pricey. And not fully standardized. The Ethernet control chips are starting to come into the range where passive cooling is very realistic for most applications with die shrinks and process improvements. But until recently, they were manufactured on older processes (ie: 65nm, etc.) which did not lend themselves to power consumption low enough.

 

[XavierMace]

We do have 10GbE silicon on mobos. Just not the ones you buy. 😛

 

[Red Squirrel]

Probably a question of businesses who need 10gbe are willing to pay for it, while home users don't really NEED it, so the prices are artificially high. Meanwhile USB is a bit more of a consumer thing. I recall even 1 gig took a while to become affordable. Even now a new 1gig 24 port managed switch is going to run you close to a grand. Though you can get them on the used market for ~$100 range.

I think 10gbe will start to come down over time though. You can buy gig switches at a half decent price that have like 4 10gbe "uplink" ports, so that's a start.

Think it will be a while till we see it on consumer motherboards though. Heck even existing gig on consumer motherboards is often sub par. I personally never had issues but heard lot of network gurus say you're better off putting in an Intel nic.

 

[frowertr]

Probably a question of businesses who need 10gbe are willing to pay for it, while home users don't really NEED it, so the prices are artificially high. Meanwhile USB is a bit more of a consumer thing. I recall even 1 gig took a while to become affordable. Even now a new 1gig 24 port managed switch is going to run you close to a grand. Though you can get them on the used market for ~$100 range.

This.

It's overkill for home use so consumer MB manufacturers don't even bother chasing that market.

Unless you're running a SAN or are replicating and moving VMs from one host to another, it isnt a needed product.

 

[Pandasaurus]

As soon as ISPs start selling >1Gb home Internet connections on a significant scale, home desktop mobo manufacturers might start putting 10Gb on the board. Maybe. But, probably not.

 

[Pantlegz]

Probably a question of businesses who need 10gbe are willing to pay for it, while home users don't really NEED it, so the prices are artificially high. Meanwhile USB is a bit more of a consumer thing. I recall even 1 gig took a while to become affordable. Even now a new 1gig 24 port managed switch is going to run you close to a grand. Though you can get them on the used market for ~$100 range.

I think 10gbe will start to come down over time though. You can buy gig switches at a half decent price that have like 4 10gbe "uplink" ports, so that's a start.

Think it will be a while till we see it on consumer motherboards though. Heck even existing gig on consumer motherboards is often sub par. I personally never had issues but heard lot of network gurus say you're better off putting in an Intel nic.

I don't know what hardware you're talking about, I can get HP 48 port managed gig switches to customers all day for around $500, with a decent markup. 10GBe will be mainstream in the next 3 years. Asus just released a SOHO switch with at least a couple 10GB interfaces on it for ~$500 if I'm remembering correctly. It's not super cheap but most consumers would pay more than that for faster WiFi...

 

[Gryz]

Just thinking, now that we have USB 3.1 Gen2 10Gbit/sec ports on mobos, why don't we have 10GbE silicon on mobos too?

To get back to your original question: if 10 Gbps USB 3.1 is so cheap, how come 10 Gbps Ethernet is so expensive ?

The answer is distance.
It's easy to make something that runs fast, but connects over short distance. To make it run over a longer distance is harder. Sometimes a lot harder.

USB 3.0 has no official maximum cable length. But supposedly the recommendation is that you shouldn't use cables longer than 3 meters. Also, whether it works or not also depends on the quality of the cable. I can only guess that with USB3.1 the maximum cable restriction is even shorter, maybe 1 or 2 meters.

10GBASE-T Ethernet (that is over Cat6a copper) can go up to 100 meters distance. That is a huge difference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Gigabit_Ethernet#Physical_layer_modules

FYI, 10 Gbps over fiber can cover much longer distances. Like 40-80 kilometers. But for fiber you need fiberoptics tranceivers. And those are always expensive. And the fiber cables will be more expensive than cat6a.