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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Ethernet pretty much sucks and has not improved substantially in consumer devices since the previous century. It also has pretty severe idle power consumption consequences for PCs, unless you are an expert who goes around fixing that.

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>Ethernet [...] has not improved substantially in consumer devices since the previous century.

We've gone from 100 Mbps being standard consumer level to 2.5 or 10 Gbps being standard now. That sounds substantial to me.

They exaggerated a little bit on the timeline. But 20+ years ago 1gbps became standard, and today there are signs of change but 1gbps is still standard.

10G Ethernet is not quite that common yet, but should become very common soon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44071701

There is not any meaningful sense in which 2.5gb ethernet is "standard". There are no TVs with 2.5gb ethernet ports. Or even 1gb ports. Yet they all have WiFi 5 or better.

2.5GbE only started gaining steam when cheap Realtek chips became available (especially since the Intel chips that were on the market earlier were buggy). Those have been adopted by almost all desktop motherboards now on the market, and most laptops that still have Ethernet. Embedded systems are lagging because they're always behind technologically and because they have longer design cycles, but it's pretty clear that most devices designed in the last year or two are moving beyond 1GbE and 2.5GbE will be the new baseline going forward.

In practical terms, WiFi 5 is slower than 1gb Ethernet.

It is bizarre that they are putting 100mbps Ethernet ports on TVs though.

> It is bizarre that they are putting 100mbps Ethernet ports on TVs though.

It's a few pennies cheaper and i'm sure they have some data showing 70%+ will just use WiFi. TCL in particular doesn't even have very good/stable drivers for their 10/100 NIC; there's a ton of people on the Home Assistant forums that have noticed that their android powered smart TV will just ... stop working / responding on the network until it's rebooted.

I’m sure you’re right, but the fact that it’s almost certainly literal pennies makes it very lame. Lack of stable drivers is also ridiculous given how long gbps Ethernet has been around.

> It is bizarre that they are putting 100mbps Ethernet ports on TVs though.

It's not that bizarre. About the only media one might have access to that is above 100mbps is 4k blu-ray rips which can hit peaks above 100m; but TVs don't really cater to that. They're really trying to be your conduit to commercial streaming services which do not encode at that high of a bitrate (and even if they did, would gracefully degrade to 100Mbps). And then you can save on transformers for the two pairs that are unused for 100base-tx.

No video streams out there uses over 100mbits so makes sense.

I’ve read that 8k streams can exceed 100mbps. I have not dig very far into that though since I don’t have an 8k tv or any 8k sources.

Streaming services are extremely compressed. Netflix only recommendeds 15mbps for 4k, even. A naive straight quadrupling of that for 8k is only 60mbps, and in reality they'll just dial up the compression anyway and probably use a 30mbps stream.

Home user CPE we install have multiple 2.5G Ethernet ports.

even with 1Gbit/s ethernet, measure latency. It will be smaller and more predictable than any wifi you can have.

You still get the best speeds over ethernet today because of how wifi standards are slow walked, both on the router and the device connected with the router. Ethernet standards are slow walked too of course but we are talking slow walking a 2.5g or 10g connection here, even otherwise crappy hardware is likely to have 1g ethernet and it’s been that way for at least 10 or 15 years.

If you want to transfer the contents of your old mac to your new mac, your best options in order of speed are 1) thunderbolt, 2) wifi, and 3) ethernet. You do not, in any sense, get "the best speeds" from ethernet. The market penetration of greater-than-1gb wired networks in consumer devices is practically nothing.

I have a U7 Pro XGS hooked up to a Pro HD 24 POE switch (all 2.5gb ports or faster).

The only way I've managed to convince any Wifi 7 client to exceed 1gbps is by freshly connecting to it over 6ghz while standing physically within arm's reach of the AP. That's it. That's the only time it can exceed 1gbps.

In all other scenarios it's well under 1gbps, often more like 300-500mbps. Which is great for wifi, but still quite below the cheapest ethernet ports around. And 6ghz client behavior across OS's (Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android) is so bad at roaming that I actually end up just disabling it entirely. The only thing it can do is generate bragging rights screenshots, in actual use it's basically entirely DOA.

And that's ignoring that ~$200 N150 NUCs come with 2.5gbps ethernet now.

I’m with you on 6ghz wifi disappointment. My phone does well with it since it supports MLO but my macbook will refuse to roam away from 6ghz until it’s close to unusable.

My isp-supplied router had 10gbe on both wan and lan sides. I swapped it for my own, but that is what modern consumer equipment looks like.

You can find a 2 port 10gbe+4 port 2.5gbe switch for just over $30 on Amazon.

If the run isn’t too long this can all run over cat5. Handily beats wifi especially for reliability but Thunderbolt is fastest if you only have 2 machines to link.

If you’re the kind of person who wants better than gigabit Ethernet, it’s very available. 2.5Gbe is just a USB adapter away. Mac Studio comes with 10GbE. Unifi networking gives you managed multi-gig and plenty of others do unmanaged multigig at affordable prices. Piles of consumer NAS support multigig.

I think this market is driven by content creators. Lots of prosumers shoot terabytes of video on a weekly basis. Local NAS are essential and multi-gig local networks dramatically improve the editing experience.

I have all 2.5gbit at home with some 10gbit SFP copper connections, it wasn't particularly difficult. The devices with built-in Ethernet ports are all gigabit of course, but the ones with USB-C ports have 2.5gbit adapters.

I could go to 10gbit but the Thunderbolt adapters for those all have fans.

This is so insanely wrong that I almost feel like we're being trolled. Yes, a direct Thunderbolt connection would be best. Failing that, a guaranteed 1Gb Ethernet connection, which is ubiquitous and dirt cheap, and has latency measured in microseconds, is going to wipe the floor with real-world Wi-Fi 7 speeds. And for what you'd pay for end-to-end Wi-Fi 7 compatible gear, you could be using 10Gb Ethernet, which is in a different league of stability and actual observed throughput compared to anything wireless.

I have Firewalla Wi-Fi 7 APs connected via 10Gb Ethernet to my router. They're brilliant, very expensive, very high quality devices. I use them only for devices which I can't hardwired, because even 1Gb Ethernet smokes them in actual real-world use.

> wipe the floor with real-world Wi-Fi 7 speeds.

I see that you have never tried this. By the way, Mac Migration Assistant doesn't need Wi-Fi infrastructure at all.

Sure have, within the last 2 weeks when I helped a coworker migrate to a new machine! Both were November 2024 MacBook Pros, so Apple's current top-of-the-line laptops.

Running over Wi-Fi dragged on interminably and we gave up several hours in. When we scrounged up a could of USB Ethernet dongles and started over, it took about an hour.

So yeah, my own personal experience confirms exactly what I'd expect: Wi-Fi is slow and high-latency compared to Ethernet, and you should always use hardwired connections when you care about stability and performance more than portability. By all means, use Wi-Fi for routine laptop mobility. If you have the option, definitely run a cable to your stationary desktop computers, game consoles, set-top boxes, NASes, and everything else within reach of a switch.

Yes thunderbolt is best but look at costs. Apple is selling a 4ft cable for $130. I have a ton of random cat 5e and cat 6 and they go for a couple dollars.

Now lets talk about my actual “old mac” and “new mac” Mid 2012 mbp and my m3 pro. The 2012 only can do 802.11n so not gigabit speeds. It does have a gigabit ethernet however.

Even if I was going m3 pro to m3 pro, I’m only getting full wifi 6e speeds if I actually have a router that makes use of 160hz channels. My router can’t. It is hard to even gleam router offerings to see which are offering proper wifi 6 because there are like dozens of skus sold even to different stores from the same brand getting slightly different skus. Afaik my mac does not support 160hz wifi 6 either.

A 4ft USB 4 cable is $30. That's more bandwidth per dollar than an Ethernet cable. Thunderbolt cables aren't cost prohibitive any more (though the devices at either end are still very expensive).

brb ima turn on my microwave halfway through your transfer

or a single shitty wifi chipset in your network thanks to a cheap iot device.

Wifi is garbage. This person has no idea what they're talking about. It sounds like they read a blog post like 5 years ago and stuck with it cuz it's an edgy take.

Yes, me and the other literally billions of people who do not use wired Ethernet to their TV are just parroting an old blog. The OP who says Ethernet is an absolute requirement for Netflix is clearly correct. You sure got me.

People aren’t saying it isn’t possible. They are saying it is objectively worse. Plenty of those TV users seem content with the crappy speakers in those tvs after all. Appeals to majority are not good arguments.

To this day I expect my wifi to drop whenever I hear a microwave, thanks to the one in my parents house: https://digitalseams.com/blog/microwave-ovens-wi-fi-and-http

Shouldn't such microwaves be decommissioned? I would assume that microwaves that are not properly shielded are dangerous to people in their vicinity?

Ethernet will usually hit hardware limits of your HDD or SSD before it actually maxes out. 1gb ethernet is better than wifi in 99% of cases because wifi in the real world is pretty bad, even with modern standards. Why else do they have to continually revamp the standards to get around congestion and roaming issues? Cuz wifi is garbage in the real world. Ethernet = Very little jitter, latency, or packet loss. Wifi = Tons of jitter, latency and packet loss.

Your take is really weird and doesn't represent the real world. What blog did you read this on and why haven't you bothered to attack that obviously wrong stance?

This is the most ridiculous lie in the thread. An ethernet link that can barely keep up with a $150 SSD costs $1250 per switch port, and needs a $1200 NIC and can go only 3m over copper before you need a $1000+ optic assembly. There is nobody with an ethernet setup in their home that outruns consumer-grade SSDs. "Ethernet is limited by SSDs" is a Charlie's Hoes level of wrong.

Yes even an HDD can keep up with 1GbE.

But if you actually want your Ethernet to be similar speed to your SSD, you don't need to spend that much. Get some used gear.

32 port 40GbE switch (Dell S6000) $210 used

Dual port 40GbE NIC (Mellanox MCX354A-FCCT) $31 used

40GbE DAC 1 meter new price $22 or 40GbE optics from FS.com (QSFP-SR4-40G) $43 new + MMF fiber cable

Of course, that's probably not going to be very power efficient for home use - 32 port switch and probably only connecting a handful of devices at most.

Compared to what?

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