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IEEE Sets New Ethernet Standard That Brings 5X the Speed Without Cable Ripping (networkworld.com)
Reader coondoggie writes: As expected the IEEE has ratified a new Ethernet specification -- IEEE P802.3bz -- that defines 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T, boosting the current top speed of traditional Ethernet five-times without requiring the tearing out of current cabling. The Ethernet Alliance wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks. Indeed, the wireless component may be the most significant implication of the standard as 2.5G and 5G Ethernet will allow connectivity to 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points, considered by many to be the real driving force behind bringing up the speed of traditional NBase-T products.
"Our new router courageously has no jacks!"
This will certainly save a lot of money for enterprises. I expect it will be the RARE company that will actually need 5Gbps per workstation. Most can probably get by on 100Mbps.
It's too thick. Clearly they need to migrate it to USB-C.
Wasn't clear from TFA if this would work on Cat 5e, or if Cat 6 is required.
Yes, because the only thing between the user and the network cable is software. Definitely no other hardware involved.
No.
802.11ac gets its speed via multiple spatial streams, using more than one antenna on both Tx and Rx sides.
Besides, the coax is 100% available all the time, while the wirelsss protocol is based on half duplex transmissions, and can only transmit to N clients at any given time (on each subband) when you have N antennas.
So for wired transmission you better use something else like MoCa.
This new standard is very interesting: it employs the same coding and spectral density as 10GBase-T (6.25 bps/Hz), but it employs the available bandwidth (Hz) depending on the cable category: Cat.5e (100 MHz) can provide 2.5Gbps and Cat.6 (250 MHz) can provide 5 Gbps.
Interestingly, before this standard there was no practical use for Cat.6 cabling: any speed you could obtain using Cat.6 cable (1Gbps) could be also obtained using cat.5e, and if you wanted something faster (10Gbps) you needed Cat. 6A (500 MHz BW). This newly ratified standard finally gets some use from those extra MHz you have in Cat. 6, if you have installed it. It will be interesting to know if 802.3bz ports will be able to measure link bandwidth to adapt speed accordingly to 2.5/5Gbps.
Wasn't 10Gbps a thing already?
Yes, it's a thing already; so if you have cat 6A installed everywhere, you can forget about it. However, there is a lot of installed 5E and 6 where it makes sense.
10 Gbps on copper has a limited range of about 15m, which is why its primary use is for servers in a data center.
The 2.5/5 Gbps copper standard will work up the 100m. It was developed largely for WiFi Access Points. 802.11ac Wave-2 with MIMO can go up to around 7 Gbps.
I have been working with 2.5G for around a year now using a 2.5G physical interface chip from Aquantia that seamlessly handles everything from 100Mbps to 10Gbps including 1G, 2.5G and 5G. If the cable isn't too long I've run 10G over cat 5. Hopefully the prices will drop quickly once more companies support this standard since I just bought the cheapest 2.5G switch I could find, 8 ports for around $1200 for development purposes. It also interoperates fine with standard 1G equipment.
Aquantia is also nice is that unlike many phy chip vendors their phy SDK is free as in beer and is fully GPL and BSD compatible, though it will need to be re-written for the Linux kernel to follow the guidelines. I re-wrote it for U-Boot though I won't be able to push it upstream for a while yet. The chip I'm using even supports MACsec in hardware. There were two different 2.5G proposals, one from Broadcom and one from Aquantia. The Aquantia is the one that ultimately got accepted as the standard.
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10GIGE needs CAT 6A cabling.
Actually, you only need CAT6 if you want to go the full 180 foot distance. Cat5e, depending on the cable's specifics will work just fine, though usually at a reduced maximum distance. That means my home's cat 5 will likely work up to 10Gig as all the runs are considerably shorter than 100 feet.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
For the simple reason that there isn't enough bandwidth within the available spectrum. It's called physics.
Cell phones do not seem to have this problem.
Density and usage matter. Having been to big trade shows and found my cell phone useless, I can attest that cell phones do indeed have this problem if there is insufficient infrastructure available.
I don't see why. If the cable is the same the jacks use all the cables. At least when I put the head on the cables I connected them all.
It's a matter of the frequency tolerance and ability for the cable to carry the requisite signals. CAT5 doesn't have the tolerance for 1GBps transmission while CAT5e does, but CAT6 and CAT7 do even better as the signal tolerances are significantly improved and able to push higher frequencies.
Most likely, when they say that you don't need to tear out the cables, they're referring to CAT6 cable installations. It you have CAT5 you'll definitely need to upgrade the cable; you will *likely* need to upgrade if you only have CAT5e. Nearly everyone has CAT5e at minimum and many have been upgrading already to CAT6; so if they can pull the 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps on CAT6 then most everyone will be quite happy that the investment they just did (in the last 5 years) to handle 1Gbps will be easily upgradeable to the new standard with just router and NIC changes - much like the 100Mbps to 1Gbps switch was with CAT5e installations.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Yes they do. Very rarely will they get even close to the theoretical max rate of whatever standard is in use in your area, never mind the advertised rate. This is true for any wireless standard because use of radio is subject to congestion and interference. Sorry, but there will always be wiring closets and hardwired connections for the applications and people that need/want performance and consistency.