atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX Networking Gigabit to Desktop: Is it a hype or real demand?

Read an article recently: Gigabit to desktop? Not so fast . Although this was an old article back in 2002, I see some points reflected in the article are still valid. I personally think "Gigabit to desktop" is more of a hype from equipment vendors than a real demand from majority of users.

How do think? I know there many people on this forum are professionals and gurus with first-hand customer experience in voice and data network cabling and setups, would love to see their comments on this question.

Have customers that started at 10 then 10/100. They're running gig now and all smiles. There must be a balance of hardware and software to achieve the full benefit.

Gigabit ethernet was an emerging technology in 1997. At this time, a lot of networks were still running 10Base-T. The cost of 100Base-T hardware was coming down at this time, so people were making the switch to 100Base-T just as gigabit gigabit was coming onto the market.

Now, we have 10Gigabit over copper on the market. Gigabit network cards are dirt cheap, and most new computers, certianly servers, come standard with gigabit NICs. Gigabit switches are quite affordable now as well.

You can argue that gig to the desktop is overkill, but that argument is very dated. Even if someone doesn't feel they NEED gigabit to the desktop now, nobody in the right mind would choose to install a technology that would prevent them from upgrading to gigabit later on.

I know you're bringing this up because of your product, but in my honest opinion you are about 10 years too late to market.

10 years ago the the average user wasnt working with 1 gig or larger files. Nowadays its not uncommon to transfer 4 gigs to or from a server and gigabit certainly makes those transfers a lot less painful. Feels kinda silly to respond to a 10 year old speculative argument which really doesnt hold water today. Gigabit to the desktop is pretty common today with most new pcs equipped with gigabit cards and gigabit switches very reasonable priced. I even have gigabit at home. If you had posted an article about 10gig to the desktop then more people may have responded but 1Gig in my opinion is a no brainer

Looks like most of us have been sold the idea of Gigabit to Desktop. I agree gigabit ports becomes very cheap over the years, but it is still at least as twice expensive as 10/100 today.

Sometimes Gigabit to desktop may become more expensive than we original thought. For many networks that are already deployed with 10/100 IP phones, running Gigabit to Ethernet may be a costly decision as this requires replacing 10/100 IP phones with gigabit IP phones, which probably is $100 more expensive per unit. This is equally true for a new network.

Another observation is that most 16 or 24-port gigabit switches available today can only use one of 1G ports as uplink when multiple switches are interlinked becasue a 10G port is still way too expensive to be available. Technically this would cause traffic blocking. Cisco (read it here ) explains that 1G uplink is OK under most situation for interlinking computers and servers because of the burst nature of data traffic. However, I would ask why they build their 10/100 switches with 1G uplink ports, not 10/100 ports? Under certain situations such as multiple PC backup by a server, the 1G uplink of gigabit switches will definitely be the bottleneck.

Therefore, I should say although Gigabit Ethernet to desktop can provide network performance over fast Ethernet at a premium, majority of users actually don't need or ask for such performances in accomplishing their daily work.

Sometimes I would like to take 10 minutes instead 10 second to download a 5GB file, so that I can take a break and get a cup of coffee or something else, which is definitely a much more healthy way to live. :-))

Most customers want Gigabit and when the price of 10 Gig comes down they will want that. Now if they had stuck with a TDM phone system there would be no need to replace it when upgrading the network.

John,
That Cisco whitepaper pretty much made every argument for gigabit to the desktop. It found that typical users can and do benefit from gigabit. You dont have to replace 10/100 phones because you implement a gigabit switch. All my switches are gigabit but my ip phones are 10/100. Most gigabit switches will autonegotiate 10/100/1000. Im not sure I follow your bottleneck scenario. The uplink between switches is a backbone connection and as such its typically a higher speed than the station ports. You can also get them with 10G uplink ports. You want the backbone connection to be as fast as possible so it wouldnt make sense to make them 10/100. If you cant afford a full gigabit switch then you can buy a 10/100 switch with gigabit uplink ports. That way you can at least have a gigabit connection to another switch or to a server or group of servers which are probably going to be running gigabit. What is your affiliation with Dual-Comm?

Reminds me that "your network is only as fast as the slowest bottleneck" routine with customers.

I have a customer with a two locations, 1500 feet apart, with a big building in between the offices. We use a dry pair from the telco and a VDSL modem. It's 25 mbps. Switches in the buildings are 10/100. there's no need to go gig because the bottleneck between the offices is 25 meg.

John, you clearly aren't here to be convinced of anything. You have a product to sell, and having that link in your signature is going to improve your Google search ranking. Most people come to this forum with honest questions that require expert answers. You came here with a loaded question intended to raise interest in your product. Your arguments against gigabit ethernet are just rationalizations because your "CableShare" switches are limited to 10/100Base-T. I will address some of these points simply to correct your misinformation in this forum.

Does it cost a bit more to purchase gigabit hardware? Yes, but the difference is much smaller than it was even two years ago. You may enjoy the extra coffee break every time you transfer data over the network, but to your boss that is lost productivity. Gigabit may be slightly more expensive, but it can have a much higher ROI.

Your scenario describing a bottleneck with a gigabit uplink makes an interesting point. With 24 or 48 ports running at 100Base-T, that 1000Base-T uplink port can still be a bottleneck during peak network traffic. This is absolutely true, especially in poorly designed and/or poorly managed networks. Your "CableShare" switch on the other hand does not have any port faster than 100Base-T. So that bottleneck in this scenario is a full 10 times worse. On that Cisco switch, and many other managed switches, you can use link aggregation to double your uplink speeds and reduce the bottleneck. Whoops...now the bottleneck is 20 times worse with your switch. You can probably extend your extra coffee break to an entire afternoon off.

In the world of ethernet a splitter of any kind is at best a last resort. I'm sure your switches are a fine alternative when doing things properly just isn't an option...and you don't mind sticking with 100Base-T...and you don't want the option of using POE...and you hate standards and best practices.

Topher, that bottleneck is in between two buildings so that doesnt mean the entire network is going to be experiencing a bottleneck. The intra building communication could still run gigabit and benefit from it. Obviously any inter building traffic would be 25Mbps.

I only see benefits for gigabit when used on office networks that have file servers. Most networks that use browser-based applications or other simple network protocols usually don't get much benefit from it.

Usually I see gigabit deployed into improperly wired/designed networks to fix the flawed layout. While it helps, something as simple as rewiring between switches and consolidating servers to a single switch would have yielded better results.

My colo is all based on 10/100 switches with gigabit uplinks between switches. Never have an issue. But in all fairness, there is no windows running at my colo either. Just by existing Windows seems to spam networks more then pretty much anything else.

Plus layer-3 switches for 10/100 are VERY inexpensive. I'm a big HP ProCurve 2600 fan. The Cisco Catalysts (3500/2900) have come down in price as well. I only use full gigabit switches for the core.

tito1411, an IP phone usually sits in between the switch and computer, which usually has a built-in 3-port switch, one port connects to the switch and one port connects to the PC. If your switch port and PC port are of Gigabit but your IP phone is of 10/100, they will all be auto-negotiated down to 100M. That means you pay for Gigabit, but you don't get gigabit. Cisco may forget to tell you this in their "Gigabit to Desktop" whitepaper. :-))

Clinton, first I should say I started looking at this "gigabit to desktop" issue when I was studying the marketability of our cableshare switch product. but I don't think I raised this question here on this forum was from the perspective of trying to educate the market not to use gigabit Ethernet. I have reached my own conclusion, and my intention is to validate the conclusion by getting feedback or comments from people on this forum who I can tell are senior professionals and gurus with first-hand experiences and insights from their daily involvement in voice/data network cabling and set up. We also sell gigabit switch product (USB powered), so don't just think I raised this question just to promote people's interest in our 10/100 products.

Now I want to get back to ROI from "gigabit to desktop" you mentioned. I can understand improved productivity when you go from 10M to 100M, but I bet most people don't feel this when you go from 100M to 1000M. Just take an example of how long it takes to move a 10MB file over network. At 10M, it is 10 seconds (estimated with 20% overhead), 1 second at 100M and 0.1 second at 1G. You see, from 10M to 100M, you save 9 seconds, but from 100M to 1G, you save only 0.9 second. Is this saving of 0.9 second the ROI you talked about? Cisco may say that ROI is where "Gigabit to Desktop" just costs twice as much as 10/100 Ethernet would cost but you get 10 times faster speed, but they may not tell you that "Gigabit to Desktop" would just give you a 0.9 sec saving in productivity per downloading of 10MB file. In other words, the benefits of "gigabit to desktop" is beyond what most human beings can see or feel, and probably there is not much there after you spent what you could saved otherwise. Agree? This may be really a good instance of how we consumers got "brain washed" to pay comfortably for what we don't need.

As for uplinks. For a 24x port 10/100 switch with 1x 1G port, the blocking ratio is about 1:2. But for a 24x port gigabit switch with 1x gigbit port as uplink, the ration is 1:24. See the difference?

Link aggregation? then you convert 10x 1G ports to a 10G pipe, and much less ports you can use now, and increase the port price 10 times higher, let alone the hassles of configuring the switch to do so. Also, you need to find a 10-port NIC to do so. Bad idea and not practical, I should say.

My own conclusion is that 100M (Fast Ethernet) will always be the "sweet spot" in term of data rate to desktop, for at least next 10 years from now, if not forever. May be I am crazy, but remember I said so if no one else has ever said so.

.
.
.
.


“There is no need for any individual to have a computer in their home.”
[Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corp, in 1977]

“No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer. 640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
[Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, in 1981]

John,
Yes when an IP phone sits in between the switch and computer it will negotiate to 10/100 or 1000 depending on the phone's capabilities. I think thats pretty basic knowledge. I dont have any ip phones that use the internal switch to feed a computer. I prefer to home run if possible and that is also the recommended method of cabling so that the phone and the pc have their own cable. 100 meg for the next 10 years?? Ill buy ya a beer if your right. :toast:

It would be cool either way if anyone would quote the following 10 years later.

"100M (Fast Ethernet) will always be the "sweet spot" in term of data rate to desktop, for at least next 10 years from now, if not forever"

[John, Someone of Dualcomm Technology, in 2009]

tito1411: Running two separated cabling for two separate LANs will be the best and most expensive approach for IP phones, which are not unusual to be seen. The link below is a white paper ("VoIP without Hype") by Fonality that talks about different approaches in terms of performance vs. cost (page 4).

https://www.trixbox.com/files/VoIP-without-Hype.pdf

Another approach is to build two separated LANs on the single set cables of an existing LAN by using the two unused twisted pairs in each cable. This approach is applicable for 10/100M fast Ethernet though.

John, if you are looking for the opinion of senior professionals and gurus, I think you will find that most are somewhat horrified by a product that encourages people to ignore standards and best practice. Splitting one cable into two Ethernet connections will usually work, but anyone concerned with quality workmanship will not do this. Period. I have been asked to do things like this for clients in the past and I refused. I have a feeling most members of this board would do the same.

If you focus on moving little 10MB files over the network, then yes, gigabit seems like overkill. When I deploy a >40GB image to a workstation, I'm pretty happy to have it. When any IT department has to roll software out to 500 workstations, gigabit can save quite a few man hours. I deal with .VHD files and DVD .ISO files all the time that are >4GB, and even gigabit seems slow when I need to copy them to my lab machines. Does this represent all networks? No it doesn't. Some people do less with their network and some do more, but why would you close the door on higher speeds? We have standards which allow for scalability and compatibility with future technologies. What reasonable person would do the opposite?

The scenario you depict for link aggregation is not at all realistic. All you are doing here is giving examples of how to do things completely wrong. This doesn't prove that gigabit is pointless, it just proves that you are really good at inventing silly scenarios where things don't work properly. Your 10 port link aggregation is a wonderful straw man argument, but it completely misses the point.

You have a product that isn't capable of gigabit, so gigabit isn't necessary. You can't do link aggregation, so that's a useless technology as well. Your switch is unmanaged, so anything that requires configuring is just overly complicated and difficult. Does your cable splitter support POE, or is that another pointless technology that nobody needs?

Long live standards based cable plants and well designed networks. Gigabit capability will be there whether you need it or not.

Hi Clinton. First I would like to thank you and all other people who expressed their opinion to my question, either negative or positive and also who read my these posts. The last thing I want to see is no one cares and no one responds.

Now, I would like to explain a little bit more.

1) 10MB vs 4GB. The reason I used 10MB as the file size, not 4GB, is because I believe 10MB is probably already much larger than the average file size of files (including email, documents, pictures, audio and video) that are being daily transferred over a typical company's network. I remember I read somewhere that the average file size traveling over the Internet was much less than 100KB.

2) In a scenario that you install DVD-size software on a remote station over network, I guess the bottleneck might not be 100M vs. 1G. The whole thing may be just more slow down by CPU reading and writing to HDD.

3) "Gigabit to Desktop" does have its attractiveness for some special or niche applications such as doing movie special effects, just as the original article I referenced in my fist post indicated. But to majority of users, it is an over-kill, and it will be such for many years to come until daily average file size over network becomes larger, say 100MB, and I don't know when that would happen.

4)The 10-port link aggregation was indeed exaggerated, but it was partially used to point to the fact that there are no 10G uplink ports available on most gigabit Ethernet switches that you can buy today. This is a weakness that has been "ignored" by those who hype "gigabit to desktop".

5) It seems that you have some mis-understanding of our cableshare Ethernet switch. The cableshare switch product family can be a managed switch, can do link aggregation, and can have uplink ports of gigabit rate. It can support PoE too. It is also in full compliance with IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standards. Also, the cabling is the same as you cables regular Ethernet switches, meaning that there is no cable splitting along the cabling from patch panel to each drop of RJ45 wall plates. In other words, you get the same workmanship as you do for normal switches.

6) I guess you may be not comfortable with running two Ethernet signals within one network cable, which may be what you considered as a non-standard approach. Cisco actually has their 6500 switches that do cable sharing ( see Cisco Cable Sharing Switch ). In the past,people concerned about cross-talk degrading signal quality, this concern was valid for Cat3 and Cat5, but CAT5e and CAT6 are much better constructed in reducing the cross-talk.

Hope the above may be helpful.

John, your "RJ45/RJ11 Splitters" would have come in handy for me once or twice where I had no other choice but to split an existing phone or data cable due to damage in a totally inaccessible place to the other (repulling cable was not an option). The product is interesting, though I'd like to see something done with the fourth pair in the splitter (a second telephone line would be my first choice, PoE second). As for using it in new installs or in place of two cables, no way I'd ever consider it. Ditto the RJ45 dual splitter. Any data cable I pull must be able to be certified (whether or not it is), and splitters of any type do not allow for that.

As to your topic question, it really depends on whose desktop we're talking about. As Clinton already mentioned, some intra-office cabling is already using 1GB, and 10GB would be nice in some applications. For those who are just trying to 'get on the internet', 100MB hardware is massive overkill since the choke point is the service coming into the building. I see this all the time in hotels: they want cat6 everywhere (including POTS :bang: ) and gigabit switches, yet they buy two T1s to service the entire building's data needs. :confused:

I don't by any stretch consider myself a "guru", just pointing out what I have observed in my brief time in this field.

I have to say though, that you will learn more about data (and telecom) by looking through other sections of this forum. I can't help but notice that all of your posts have been in this thread, and that comes off as a bit one-sided and self-promoting to me. Not that that is always a bad thing, but imho you'd be better off explaining specific applications in which your product(s) excels.

Jack

Jack, thanks for your comments. The fourth pair can definitely be used for second telephone line. PoE may not be possible as PoE uses two pairs to supply inline power. PoE inline power is usually available already on the two data pairs in most of PoE switches that you buy (PoE Standard).

Would you please elaborate in more detail how you certify or qualify the cabling? what kind of testing equipment or tool do you use? Why is that "splitters of any type do not allow for that"

How so? Unless the picture of your splitter is incorrect, only pins 4 and 5 are installed on the telephone side of the splitter.

I certify it by doing permanent link testing, which is usually from workstation to patch panel (jack to jack). I have test adapters that have jacks instead of plugs to test plugs, but nothing to test a splitter. No one (Fluke, Ideal, etc.) makes such a test lead, because splitters are not a standard installation. Channel link testing wouldn't be possible at all. The only way to test a permanent link that has splitters on both ends is to remove the splitters. Sure, that link will more than likely pass a catx certfication, but if I were to test through your "RJ45/RJ11" splitters, the test would fail for numerous reasons: wiremap would be first (4/5 and 7/8), then the failures would pile up from there. I wouldn't even bother certifying a network with splitters, because it would be pointless.

Will your splitters work? Probably. Is it right? About as right as punching down data cable only 1,2,3, and 6 on the jacks and patch panels.

As I wrote before, your splitters would be of some use in a small number of applications, or to postpone an inevitable recabling job. I will say this though: if I ever walk into a phone room and find 50 or 100 splitters hanging mid-air, I'm going to be, to put it mildly
... less than pleased.

Jack

Does anyone here possess an accurate means to test and configure an RJ45? My CTX analog loss test set's batteries are dead and I can't justify the cost to replace them. I ask this question since it it getting more and more difficult to locate "thousand cycle" (1004 KHz) test numbers anymore. This is especially true with CLECs. Does anyone really use dial-up services that use an RJ45 jack anymore? I can say with certainty that I have not installed/configured one in at least twenty years.

- "The fourth pair:" I meant " can be", not the actual one shown in the picture that is not implemented with the fourth pair for a second phone line.

- "50 or 100 splitters hanging mid-air:" you wouldn't see any splitters hanging mid-air with the use of a cableshare switch as those splitters are built inside the switch. Also, there is no cable splitting jack to jack (from patch panel to a wall plate of cable drop. So you still can use your Fluke/Ideal tools to test the cable run.

Ed, how is RJ45 and dial-up service related? Do you mean that a RJ45 jack is used for RJ11 phone plug?

John:

HERE is the wiring diagram for an RJ45 jack. As you can see, this is used for a modem connection to the outside network with built-in loop loss programming. This is accomplished via the resistor placed across pins 7 and 8. This loss is measured by dialing into a 1004 cycle tone source to determine the appropriate resistor to install.

By "RJ45", are you referring to a 10/100 Base-T network connection? Those are two different animals for which there is no RJ designation.

The term RJ = Registered Jack. RJs are telephone and data jacks or applications registered with the FCC. Numbers, like RJ-11, RJ45, etc. are widely misused in the telecommunications industry. A much more precise way to identify a jack is to specify the number of positions (width of opening) and number of conductors. Example: "8-position, 8-conductor jack" or "6-position, 4-conductor jack".

HERE IS SOME MORE INFORMATION on this subject for future reference. I hope this clears things up.

Thanks, Ed. That's good to know. I further googled it out that RJ45S is referred to "8P2C + keyed, for one data line with programming resistor", according to wiki

WOW that is a quick cup of coffee

4G datafiles... what about the 140G disk to disk nightly backup or pushing the 20G vhd development images out to testing environments... I'll keep my gigabit, thank you.

Is the "140G disk to disk" server to server or desktop to server?

If it is desktop to server, does your gigabit switch has any 10G uplink ports?

Does the server backup multiple desktops at the same time? or it backups one by one?

Do you remember how many minutes or hours it took to move 140G disk to disk over your gigabit link?

I am just curious to know any answers to the above. Thank you.

I took this post off topic, so I'll take it right back to the original post. You are asking if gigabit is hype from equipment vendors, or if there is real demand from users. The key here is users, and not applications. I can argue about all of the real world applications that I see every day that create a demand for gigabit. You in turn can argue that we all need to have a cup of coffee and transfer small files. The bottom line is that we're talking about applications for gigabit, and you specifically asked about demand from users. So, do users want gigabit?

Yes, in my experience there absolutely is a demand from users for networks that are at least capable of running gigabit. That doesn't mean they have applications that require gigabit, but this is what users want. We have had threads here which discuss clients wanting Cat6 or Cat6A installed instead of Cat5e. They want the higher category data cable to support gigabit and beyond. Customers are willing to pay extra for Cat6 even when we tell them Cat5e is fully capable of running gigabit. The majority of users do not want to have an infrastructure that will limit them. The last line of the article you linked speaks to this:

"For a few bucks more, why not future-proof your network now?"

Again, this article is from 2002, and gigabit was around 5 years before then. If you want to future-proof your network now you install a cable plant capable of 10gig. Wait 5 years and the majority of users will want their network to be capable of 10gig. They may not need it, they may not use it, but that doesn't mean the user demand won't be there.

This discussion reminds me of the arguments I heard (and made) when telephones went from 25pr 1A2 to "skinny wire" electronic... or from 2pr. analog to 1pr. digital... or from TDM to VoIP...

The fact of the matter is that staying in business is all about customer demand and customer demand isn't driven by the customer's understanding of technical details, by the demands of the their application, or even common sense assessment of ROI... it's driven by customer perceptions. Research, manufacturing, marketing... all those things push technology faster and bigger. Then it's like climbing Mt. Everest... they want it because it's available.

If customers feel they need newer technology, that's what they'll demand, and that's where the market will go... with or without us. We can talk ourselves blue in the face about why things shouldn't change and we can be absolutely right. Meanwhile, somebody else is responding to that demand and eroding our marketshare.

I would have to agree with Clinton partially. when we wired our new building in April the only reason we didn't go 10G was cable cost. We did put conduit in all the walls, and the new space is wired with 6, and not 6a. We left room to add 6a if a particular client project needs it.

Part of it is user education where more internal speed wont help their internet access, however we are moving more and more data across the network. from a bandwidth standpoint. IP phones, Video Conferencing, video based training, security cameras, hard drive images (and yes those goto end user systems)

John, the 140 Gig is created as a single file
across the network. Not created local and copied. True, I/O bus on either system can limit the data transfered, and it is the case right now, but the 2 hour difference in backup time was worth the change. Backup including verify is currently taking 12 hours, and was taking 14 hours before. if I can shave another 2 hours off by upgrading the destination to faster drives and a better IO bus, that will be money well spent as well. That particular system has some other issues and is scheduled for replacement.

This selling point seems to be more as an insurance than real performance/feature advancement that average users can feel or enjoy. However, I guess this insurance for possible technology obsolescent is never as meaningful as my auto/home/health insurance.

I rarely saw any other new technology (when they were new) was marketed this way by telling people: buy it, it may be useful in future. This was not the case when people moved from mechanic typewriter to word processor, from analog PBX to VoIP, from fixed landline to mobile cellular phone, from film camera to digital camera, from tube TV to LCD or plasma TV, from dial-up modem to DSL or cable modem and so on so forth. My point is that people should feel the real impact/benefits of a new technology in a substantial way as soon as they start using it. Otherwise, it may just be a hype.

From another perspective, I would say that "gigabit to desktop" maybe more meaningful only when applications such as "HDTV to desktop" becomes a necessity for daily business communications. But even "HDTV to desktop" can be handled nicely by fast Ethernet as its bitrate should be less than 20Mbps. Probably "Multi-channel 3D HDTV to desktop" would out-run 100Mbps? This may be why Cisco's has been pursuing their Tele-presence project to create a demand for "Giagbit to desktop". But I doubt it would be at least 10 years away if it could become real for average office users?

In the same 2002 article, it says "The biggest obstacle I see to Gigabit on the desktop is that there's no killer app for it......".

Today(7 years later), there is still not a single killer application for "gigabit to desktop", and I can safely bet there would not be any either for the next 10 years.

By calculation, moving 140GB data at 1G speed would take less than half a hour, which is quite short compared to the 12-hour backup time. This is an example that the bottleneck may not be the network speed, but the IO devices, which should be true in most real world situations.

Gigabit ethernet over the powerline is here - pretty cool and not that expensive https://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatSectionView.process?Section_Id=206578

From their website: "The standard transmission rate—1000Mbps—is the ideal physical data rate. Actual data throughput and distance will be lower, depending on interference, network traffic, building materials, and other conditions."

With added overhead of doing encryption, the actual data throughput is likely well below 1G, but it is definitely higher than current 85Mbps technology.

Although 100Mbps should be fast enough to stream HD movie, "Gigabit to Entertainment center" or even "Gigabit to Home" should be more interesting for residential users than "Gigabit to desktop" for business users.