Ethernet is Still Going Strong After 50 Years::The technology has become the standard LAN worldwide
How much power does that need to run? What does it cost? How many people could actually use that bandwidth? How does it generally compare to fiber optic?
It’s not about cost or outright performance. A cat6 patch cable is compatible with anything from a 10BASE-T intercom to a 10GBASE-T connection that can only be saturated with the most cutting-edge hardware (my desktop literally can’t write to its M.2 drive this fast!)
So if I’m running wires through walls, I’m choosing cat6 because it’ll work for basically any device, rather than constraining myself to exotic SFP connectors on both ends.
Fiber theoretically future-proofs you for 100GE, but let’s be real, that shit is HELLA expensive and literally no consumer hardware can benefit from it. Basically if your usecase requires fiber, you’ll know.
And what use case is there for a wired connection like this? Next to nobody needs that. I, engineer/gamer/PC enthusiasts/bla, know zero people who ran wires to their PC like I did, despite certain advantages with LAN in gaming. You can imagine how many people I know that not only run the wires but then also actually need more than the standard 1Gb/s.
It is/would be a waste of resources and not needed for almost everyone. That is what I am saying. That is why we do not see any significant development in the last 20 years, it is still the same 1 Gb/s like back then.
I’ve ran cat 6a in my home as when I’m sure to upgrade the devices I don’t want to have to redo all the cabling. I am looking at moving up from 1 Gb/s already as I can easily max out the connection when transferring data over the network, like a backup to a different system.
Hell, I’m pretty sure we have ISPs here in EU thag offer 2Gb WAN.
In terms of significant developments, more and more PCs are currently making the move to 2.5gb networking too
