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by ldaw 879 days ago
I'm not sure that's a fair blanket statement to make. I don't think I've bought any new devices with only 1gig ports in quite some time. My work laptop has 2.5GbE, my 5 year old desktop has 2.5GbE, my NAS has 10GbE, etc. 2.5GbE switches have also gotten quite cheap.

My WiFi 6 router only has gigabit LAN ports, but that's because I didn't personally need to go any higher than that. Faster options were available at the time I bought it.

My point is that consumer electronics are generally available with >1GbE if the application suits it. If you only buy the cheaper models then 1GbE is more common. There are plenty of applications where even 1GbE is overkill and spending any more money on a faster link would be throwing away money.

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I think stagnation is a fitting description. Gigabit came out in the 1990s. It is still the mainstream speed. For example, a base mac mini, despite being one of the fastest machines you can buy, has a gigabit port or optional $100 10-gig port. There is no option for a 2.5 gigabit port. An iMac comes either without ethernet, or with gigabit. NUCs come with 2.5g, I grant you that, and I attribute that to Intel's push for the standard. But their 2.5g chipset notoriously doesn't work.

2.5g is on the higher end of devices a consumer would buy today, and lacks support among even slightly older devices. Wifi 7 is similar: it exists, but just barely. There is a Wifi 7 device in my hand right now, but few people own one. Under ideal conditions WiFi 7 whoops 2.5gbps ethernet, though. Even 6E which came out years ago, gives comparable throughput to 2.5g ethernet.

$100 is a little pricey I guess for an adapter but how much is it to get a wifi router that actually does 10Gbps in actual tests? For example I found this review for a “9.5Gbps” device that costs $1400 and actually hits like 1.5Gbps when measured.

https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/wi-fi-6e-th...

If they were actually hitting the speeds they market these things at, wifi probably would have “stagnated” 10 years ago.

The RealTek 2.5gb ethernet on my Asus motherboard hits maybe 400mbps with a tailwind, because it only supports a single receive queue. Not hitting the advertised base rates is common to wired and wireless alike.