Why hasn't gigabit ethernet really taken off yet in the home?

[jtvang125]

Is 10/100 really sufficient for most people at the moment? I do a lot of large file transfers between computers on the network and even 100 Mbps is slow now.

 

[Diaonic]

Originally posted by: jtvang125
Is 10/100 really sufficient for most people at the moment? I do a lot of large file transfers between computers on the network and even 100 Mbps is slow now.

That's like asking ?Why haven't environment friendly cars taken off?"

The answer has multiple of angles
These are two I would pick as directly relating this.

1. Availability - Consumers like the things they are buying now. When most brick and mortar retail stores have not been carrying gig equipment, this directly relates to what ends up in the home.
2. Pricing - the pricing on gig equipment for the past few years has been substantially higher than normal 10/100. Most users won't notice the difference for the applications they are using (internet, email, word docs, printing ECT...)

 

[Griffinhart]

Well, if you go to any Bestbuy, CompUSA etc and see what's available to consumers, Most routers a consumer would want to get just don't have gigabit as an option.

If the choice is a $50 Linksys router with Wireless or a wired only gigabit router for for $170, the choice is pretty obvious.

Only now are Wireless routers starting to offer Gigabit speeds for the hard ports.

DLink has the DIR-655 ($130ish)
Linksys has a couple of models ($200 and $300)
Netgear has one ($130ish)

That's about it.

For comparison, I recently picked up a REALLY cheap G router for a friend. It was a TRENDNet (never heard of them before) router that after rebate cost me $3. Yes, $3.

Gigabit won't take off in the consumer space until the prices really drop.

 

[spyordie007]

Or how about that the majority of home networks are really only networked to share the internet connection; if your internet connection is less than 100Mbps there's no need for a faster network.

 

[robmurphy]

Not that many users have 2 or more desktop PCs. Most of the questions here seem to be how to setup wireless network. Wireless is pushed harder here in the UK than Gigabit.

I have several HP desktops bought over the last 2 - 3 years and none of them have Gigabit as standard. The newer HP desktops do have gigabit. This would mean that most of the PCs already out there do not have a gigabit ethernet interface. Most home users are not going to get a gigabit NIC and fit it themselves.

If you do go ahead and fit the gigabit NICs and get a gigabit switch the actual file transfers do not get that much inprovment. I did some testing on the machines I have using iperf. On the HP machines that I have that use the MSI 7184 motherboard gigabit does not work very well. An intel gigabit NIC using 9000 byte jumbo frames will send at 330 Mbs at best. Thats on a AMD S939 X2 4600 CPU, 1 Gig of ram. The same type of card in an old 1.26G P3 with 256 M ram machine will send at about 450 Mbs.

Another HP machine using an MSI 7093 MB is even worse it will only send at 140 MBs. To rule out the switch I tried connecting the PCs directly with a cable. No difference. MY HP NC8000 laptop managed about 400+ Mbs on send bandwidth without and tweaks or adustments, and that does not have jumbo frames.

The one thing that is common on all the problem machines is the ATI express 200 chipset. Either there is something wrong with the way MSI have used the chipset, or the chipset has a large problem with using the PCI bus to the full.

The Intel NICs I've used reach 900 Mbs on other machines, or so it has been reported on these forums. The 2 motherboards in question share the same BIOS so they are very similar. The main difference is that the 7093 has 4 SATA ports and the 7184 has 2 SATA ports. Maybe having the extra SATA ports on the 7093 has reduced the bandwidth that the PCI bus is given. Its not just the gigabit NICS that see this problem. A haupague WIN TV card will not work properly in the machine with the 7093. It works fine in the ones with the 7184.

I have tried another 7093 MB as one came my way, and guess what exactly the same problem, so its not limited to that one board. I have tried other gigabit NICs (Dlink using the Realtek chipset) and they perform much worse. I have tried a complete reload of the OS going from XP home to XP pro, no difference. I have tried using the original MSI BIOS, the problem remains the same.

These 2 motherboards are not just used by HP. They were used by Emachines, and may have been used by other large PC makers.

If my experience is anything to go by there is a large base of machines out there that will not give any real bennefit if fitted with gigabit ethernet. Most of the NICs that the average home user will be offered will be based on the Realtek chipset and so will only offer 60 - 70 % speed increase compared to the 1000 % promised. To add to that here in the UK gigabit switches with jumbo frame support typicaly cost 4 - 5 times more that the equivelant 100 BT switch. Add all this up and gigabit will be an expensive dissapointment to most home users in the UK.

Rob.

 

[Mike2002]

I think most people here overestimate what the typical computer user does with their network. Most to the houses probably have a couple computers that are hooked up to the network and used for a few hours a day probably not at the same time. They probably surf some webpages, watch a few CNN videos, send some emails, and watch youtube. I also believe the average user doesn't share files between computers either, and if they did, the extra time taken wouldn't really be recognizable to the regular user. Price will be the determining factor when it comes to transferring to gigabit since benefiting from gigabit in the average home is a long ways away. For computer enthusiasts though, we want gigabit and that why we'll pay for it.

 

[spidey07]

It hasn't really taken off in the business world because there isn't much of a need. Same with the home, it's just not needed for the overwhelming majority of people.

It's akin to asking why haven't 700 dollar video cards and 200 dollar power supplies taken off in the typical home.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: jtvang125
Is 10/100 really sufficient for most people at the moment? I do a lot of large file transfers between computers on the network and even 100 Mbps is slow now.

Yep, 100 Mb/s is just fine for most people. In fact, as the vast majority of home Internet is < 10 Mb/s, people could dig up 10 Mb/s equipment and think "why bother with new-fangled 100 Mb/s, it's way more than I need".

Given this fact, that 10 Mb/s networking would suit the vast majority of people, I think you owe it to the majority to just that -- dig up 10 Mb/s equipment, or at least manually configure your gear to 10 Mb/s, and sit tight until the average Internet speed exceeds this amount.

-------------------------
"The above is probably just my usual sarcasm and in no way reflects my real opinion (and,or) may include subtleties of sufficient rarity as to appear to the unsuspecting like total gibberish."

Moonbeam

 

[Griffinhart]

I'm sure that's the logic that router manufacturers have used. Truth is, I think more people have multiple PCs these days than most think. Of my non-tech friends and family members, there is only one that has a single computer.

One friend has His PC and a PC for his daughters to share, but now two of them are in College and just got their own laptops since they were required by the shcool.

My Friends 65 year old mother has a Desktop and a Laptop.

My Older Sister has a couple of PC's in the house for family use.

Another Sister has 3 computers. Two of her son's have their won PCs and she has her laptop.

While I don't see them needing Gigabit anytime soon, I do see them needing more than a 10mb set up now. Many cable companies around me are now offering 10mb download and having the extra headroom on your hoome network is worth while IMHO. And FIOS is starting to come on strong here. And The Boston area being one of the "competitive" areas for ISPs, FIOS is often 20mb down.

 

[robmurphy]

Here in the UK 20 Mbs down speed is available if you live in an area with cable TV. Thats been going for a few months now. There were problems at the start with users only getting 6 - 10 Mbs, not 20. I had the same problem.

Virgin media asked me to test the download speed, and gave me a file to download. One some machines I was getting 10 - 12 Mbs, and on another I was getting 20. I remembered that I had made changes to the TCP widow size for gigabit on the quicker machine and once I made those changes on the other machines they would all download at 20 Mbs.

The ping time to the server with the file to download was about 14 - 15 ms. I think the default window size for a 100 BT link meant that the link would never get to 20 Mbs with that amount of latency.

The strange thing was that I was given 2 links to files to download, one was just http and the other was ftp. The TCP window size changes affected both downloads. The ftp one should not have been affected by the TCP settings but it appears that it was.

Virginmedia in the UK are now trialing a 50 Mbs service. I wonder how many cans of worms that will open? The Netgear WGT624 router I have can cope with 20 Mbs downloads, I will be interested to see if it can cope with 50 Mbs. I wonder how many other home broadband routers will cope with 50 Mbs?

Rob.

 

[spidey07]

Of course the FTP transfer was affected by TCP changes. most all internet protocols run on TCP and when you make any change it affects the performance of EVERY application that is TCP based (almost all are).

 

[robmurphy]

From quick google it appears that ftp runs over TCP. That would explain why the changes to the TCP window size made a difference. For some reason I thought that ftp ran over UDP not TCP.

Rob Murphy

 

[spidey07]

FTP most certainly does use TCP. As I said earlier, most all applications do as it's a reliable connection oriented transport protocol. You are changing your TCP parameters and as the initiator of the conversation you dictate things like window size, etc. Of course window size can change during the conversation based on other parameters. You might want to read up on the OSI model and operation of TCP if you want more information.

 

[robmurphy]

The machines also have the RFC 1323 options enabled so that TCP can tune the window size.

If I get chance I will be replacing the 7093 motherboard with a Foxconn one base on one of the later Nivida chipsets for S939. It was being cleared out for about 12 UK pounds, so its a cheap fix, just some hasle replacing motherboard. It will be interesting to compare the differences between the new and old system.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: robmurphy
If I get chance I will be replacing the 7093 motherboard with a Foxconn one base on one of the later Nivida chipsets for S939. It was being cleared out for about 12 UK pounds, so its a cheap fix, just some hasle replacing motherboard. It will be interesting to compare the differences between the new and old system.

I agree that trying something other than old ATI chipsets is a good idea -- you've got some really bad iperf results compared to what can be commonly seen these days, and the chipset can be at fault for this. I've seen something like this with poor send results from an old VIA chipset.