[PebblesHD]

Switching equipment for anything over gigabit remains triple or more the price here in Australia, so these standards might be great but even the 2.5gb port on my desktop is useless to me so any more than that just gets further from helpful at a consumer level. Never mind I can’t even get internet at over 100mbps…

Meanwhile for data centre usage, what is the attraction for faster copper vs fibre interconnects?

[sitkack]

10GbE RJ45 networking is the most expensive, if you want to get into higher speed networking you need to use cards with SFP+ (SFPP) and QFSP+ ports, then you select either a transceiver for the application or use a DAC (direct attach cable) that includes the transceiver and cable in a single piece.

40GbE with cards and DAC cables are pretty cheap if you can get them shipped from the states. Cards are on the order of 15-50 (for both 10GbE to 40GbE QSFP).

If you are trying to figure this stuff out on your own from listings, you will be utterly lost. Use a big llm to help you out and cross reference, stuff can get tricky real quick.

If you want to get started, the lowest friction path is to get a couple intel 520, 540 or 710 nics and some patch cables. I started with just two 520s and a some cables for loop back.

A little bit more than the states, but not bad. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/394258109292

[slau]

Do DAC cables really have a transceiver built in? I thought they were called “direct attach cables” and were limited in length because they “directly attached” one SFP module to the other one.

[sitkack]

I don't know how much electronics are in a DAC cable, I haven't taken one apart and I can't find any CT scans of one online.

https://hackaday.com/2023/10/24/using-industrial-ct-to-exami...

https://www.lumafield.com/article/usb-c-cable-charger-head-t...

[toast0]

This article didn't mention faster copper as far as I could see. 1.6Tb Ethernet and its predecessor 800Gbe are for fiber, maybe copper for DAC and backplanes.

That's not exciting for consumers, 10g hasn't managed to get far for consumers, although 2.5g is starting to show up more places. I'd rather not buy from aliexpress, but there's some ok priced stuff there than can do 2.5g with maybe a 10g port or two.

10BaseT1L is also mentioned, but that's 10Megabit on a single pair, not exciting for speed, but maybe exciting for reusing limited wiring that's in place.

[fps-hero]

I think you have a misunderstanding about the Ethernet standard they are discussing. This isn’t copper Ethernet, its fibre Ethernet standard. Copper Ethernet caps out at 25Gb/s with an impractically short 10 meter cable run.

[dacaoc]

I have come across the following where each line is at 56Gb/s https://apps.juniper.net/hct/model/?component=QDD-400G-DAC-2...

[darmon333]

It's all about costs vs tradeoffs. Ethernet was the lower cost alternative to fibre for most of the internets history.