I've broken the sound barrier... Welcome to Mach 2.5 gbps ! (For under 80 euro)

[Wavetrex]

Had enough of slow-ass gigabit network, when storage has reached speeds of multiple GB/sec (NVMe), being stuck with 100MB/s network... just couldn't take it anymore.

Troll screenshot is troll, it happened as the speed dipped a bit... but it did show 2.5Gbps for most of the time.

Yes I am aware there are plenty of professional equipments that do 10Gbps or higher, but that requires new cabling and such...
But this is a home environment, I can't re-cable the entire house with expensive fiber or 10g certified copper and SFP modules.

These are two cheap USB dongles with a Realtek 2.5g network chip in them, for under 40 euro/piece, and... see the results.
I love it !

Stuff copies so fast between my two PC's, it's unreal !

 

[TheLostSwede]

What cables did you put in? If you have Cat 6 or better, you're good for up to 55m for 10Gbps.
€40 seems a tad high for that though, at least compared to what you can get 10Gbps Ethernet cards for, that would also do 2.5 and 5Gbps.
The downside would be that you need a spare x4 PCIe slot...
Still cheaper than Trendnet though, which seems to want north of €50 for their equivalent product.
You reminded me as well, I should test the 2.5Gbps Realtek chip on my new board at some point.

This is my PC to my NAS over 10Gbps.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

What cables did you put in? If you have Cat 6 or better, you're good for up to 55m for 10Gbps.
€40 seems a tad high for that though, at least compared to what you can get 10Gbps Ethernet cards for, that would also do 2.5 and 5Gbps.
The downside would be that you need a spare x4 PCIe slot...
Still cheaper than Trendnet though, which seems to want north of €50 for their equivalent product.
You reminded me as well, I should test the 2.5Gbps Realtek chip on my new board at some point.

Cat 6?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Cat 6?

Yes, Category 6 cables, rather than Category 6a, which is needed for runs of up to 100m. Obviously Cat 6a is recommended.
I even found that you can run 10Gbps over Cat 5e, if it's a short enough run. I used the wrong cable initially, but it worked
One of those things that happen when you think your cable is X, but it happened to be Y...

Category 6 cable - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Kapone33]

Had enough of slow-ass gigabit network, when storage has reached speeds of multiple GB/sec (NVMe), being stuck with 100MB/s network... just couldn't take it anymore.

View attachment 127656

Troll screenshot is troll, it happened as the speed dipped a bit... but it did show 2.5Gbps for most of the time.
View attachment 127657

View attachment 127658



Yes I am aware there are plenty of professional equipments that do 10Gbps or higher, but that requires new cabling and such...
But this is a home environment, I can't re-cable the entire house with expensive fiber or 10g certified copper and SFP modules.

These are two cheap USB dongles with a Realtek 2.5g network chip in them, for under 40 euro/piece, and... see the results.
I love it !

Stuff copies so fast between my two PC's, it's unreal !

Hi do you also have a 2.5 Gbit router?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Hi do you also have a 2.5 Gbit router?

I think you mean switch, no? Since that is much more important than the router. The switch most people use today though, is integrated into their router, which is also a Wi-Fi device.
That said, most modern NICs do auto MDI-X, which allows for direct device to device communication, so no need for a switch. It's a bit of a hassle to set it up though, especially if you want those two devices to also connect to the rest of the network, but it can be done. I was doing that initially for my 10Gbps NICs, but ended up getting a switch, as it made my life easier.

Medium-dependent interface - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Kapone33]

I think you mean switch, no? Since that is much more important than the router. The switch most people use today though, is integrated into their router, which is also a Wi-Fi device.
That said, most modern NICs do auto MDI-X, which allows for direct device to device communication, so no need for a switch. It's a bit of a hassle to set it up though, especially if you want those two devices to also connect to the rest of the network, but it can be done. I was doing that initially for my 10Gbps NICs, but ended up getting a switch, as it made my life easier.

Medium-dependent interface - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

No I did mean modem or router. I know you can do switches for 2.5 and 10Gbit but I have an X399 board with a 2.5 GBit NIC and was looking at my ISP which has one modem that comes with a 2.5 port.

 

[TheLostSwede]

No I did mean modem or router. I know you can do switches for 2.5 and 10Gbit but I have an X399 board with a 2.5 GBit NIC and was looking at my ISP which has one modem that comes with a 2.5 port.

What is one port going to help with? You need at least two to gain any benefit from moving to something faster than Gigabit.
Sure, some switches supports bonding, but that generally works poorly and doesn't tend to give you any performance improvement, unless you're trying to access say a NAS with multiple clients, then it can help.
The 2.5Gbps port on a router might be useful if you have faster than Gigabit internet coming in to your home, but very few people do so far.

 

[Kapone33]

What is one port going to help with? You need at least two to gain any benefit from moving to something faster than Gigabit.
Sure, some switches supports bonding, but that generally works poorly and doesn't tend to give you any performance improvement, unless you're trying to access say a NAS with multiple clients, then it can help.
The 2.5Gbps port on a router might be useful if you have faster than Gigabit internet coming in to your home, but very few people do so far.

I do have the highest Internet package my ISP provides but I will probably call them later today and ask.

 

[Wavetrex]

This is a direct connection between my two primary computers (where most if not all the files are stored).
Internet is too slow to matter, 10-year-old gigabit is more than enough for it so no changes there.

This particular test is done on a single cable with two of these USB adapters without any switch or otherwise, and it seems to work fine.

I don't really need 10gbps (or even 5), since most of the activity will be about copying from HDD to HDD, and that tops at 200MB/s, so with 2.5gbps network it's ideal.
(And in rare occasions to a SSD, but also form a HDD in most cases, where all my 4K video files are stored)

€40 seems a tad high for that though, at least compared to what you can get 10Gbps Ethernet cards for, that would also do 2.5 and 5Gbps.

€40 is high ?

Asus XG-C100C 10G Netzwerkkarte: Amazon.de: Computer & Zubehör

Asus XG-C100C 10G Netzwerkkarte (RJ45-Port, IEEE 802.3an 10G Base-T) - Kostenloser Versand ab 29€. Jetzt bei Amazon.de bestellen!

www.amazon.de

This thing is freekin' €95, and yes, needs an X4 slot...
It is the cheapest 10gbps card that exists.

Plus the cable issue, 10gbps doesn't really work on old Cat 5e cables (which this house has).

No, I'm quite sure I'm good with the 2.5gbps dongles... all that USB on the back of both PC's didn't do much anyway.

That said, most modern NICs do auto MDI-X, which allows for direct device to device communication, so no need for a switch.

More like all of them. This stopped being an issue while people were still using Dialup...
I don't think that I've ever seen an 100mbps network card (yes, not gigabit, just 100mbps) that doesn't do Auto MDI-X... and that's before Anno 2000...

Latency test
1 gbps:

2.5 gbps

Doesn't get very precise under 0.5ms, but eyeballing it I would say it's around 0.37ms average for 2.5g, so around 60% lower latency.
I think that's low enough to launch games over the network from a remote SSD without feeling an obvious slowdown