Posted on 07/01/2025 12:42:27 PM PDT by CptnObvious
I use Linux not Windows spyware.
Question: Is the 2m length of the Ethernet cable a max length for the network protocol to work properly? That's too reminiscent of the null modem days. (I'm 100% showing my age LOL)
I’d suggest a 10Gbps switch as well. 2.5Gbps seems to be quirky at times are the reports I hear from people.
Super cheap on Ebay - Avaya, Extreme Networks, Aruba, any of the commercial brands.
How much extra throughput do you find?
Thanks for the Question. Reading about Jumbo Frames: the higher Jumbo Frames may not detect errors via CRC as well. To mitigate that we want an error free network as much as possible. The 2 Meter Cable CAT 6 Ethernet Cable is that sweet spot.
If you insert an Ethernet Switch, I recommend the CAT 6, 2 meter cables to ALL ETHERNET CLIENTS, 1Gz and up, on a large size JUMBO FRAME NETWORKS.
I cannot predict how much increased throughput you might have. I can only say that on my 2.5Gz Jumbo 9014 instead of 250 GBytes/s, I'm seeing 280 MBytes/s.
Note: Also see Sweet Spots at the end of the Article.
I’m amazed and how much an ethernet switch optimizes my home wifi mesh nodes.
I’m running 2 15ft cat 7 cables at 10gbps without issue (my modem is in one room of the house and the wifi router one room over for best coverage)
It depends on the size of data you’re transmitting. Large files, like blu ray or 4K rips transfer in a fraction of the time that they used to. Lots of small files will have less of an impact because each file copy will have the same amount of overhead. But there should be less backup/buffering.
A 10Gbps Switch with 3 ports or more is a bit more than this retiree can afford. They do look like they are coming down. I've not seen 10 Gbps ports on any cheap mini's yet. Using 2 10Gbps Dongles in the place of the two 2.5Gbps ports, increases the minimum price from about 7 dollars for the CAT6. to about $240 (Two 10 GBps dongles and CAT 6 2 meter Cable) for most.
We can have 5 people sharing a 600 mbps internet service with two people streaming Hulu while two people do web video conferencing without missing a beat ... after I installed the Ethernet bridge between the wifi mesh nodes (with Ethernet cables strung through the house connecting 3 child nodes from the bridge with the 1 parent node). The nodes weren't connecting wirelessly, perhaps with all of the duct work in between the floors. And Ethernet connecting through a hub is fine when it's just the wife and me. But when other folks stay over, the bridge was needed to greatly reduce the network collisions, even though all of the child wi-fi nodes talk to just the parent node and not each other.
The only drawback is my internet service has gone down when the grid power went down about 5 times in the past 7 or 8 months, while the home had power. I'm tempted to sign up for Starlink for that alone.
What WiFi nodes are you using and how fast is the router?
If the nodes/switch/router are 1Gb Ethernet I don’t think that would be the contention. (Jumbo packets would help there, too, as you can transmit data in fewer packets.) if they’re somehow on 100mb Ethernet that’s your bottleneck.
WiFi also depends on what you’re using. If you’re using a typical 2.4/5g band WiFi especially 802.11ac or higher I’d think that’d be enough to handle 5 people gracefully. I’d google for optimal advanced wifi settings for your router, too. Some of the default settings will slow things down for max compatibility and you might have QoS turned on (or you might want to turn it on)
“A 10Gbps Switch with 3 ports or more is a bit more than this retiree can afford.”
$79.95 on Amazon.
Again, my bottleneck went away when I replaced my Ethernet hub with an Ethernet bridge. I didn't expect much improvement but it worked great.
My expectations were based on my belief that there would be less packet collisions with all child nodes talking only to and from the parent node. Basically the parent node is always part of the communication, and each child node respond when it's receiving the packet (with mostly download info from the internet, though there is some upload from child nodes to parent node). So I expected practically no improvement from adding the bridge. But it was cheap anyway so I tried it and it's worked great for about 5 years.
Very good. Basically, when you ask for, say the first 100 bytes of a file, the operating system looks at the File System Cluster Size say 4096. It brings into Main Memory Cluster 0 of your file, 4096 Bytes, then gives you your 100 bytes that you asked for. When you ask of bytes 200-300, it's already in main memory and doesn't have to fetch it from the drive. When you ask for bytes 4097-4197, it fetches Cluster(1) 4096 more bytes of the drive.
Higher caching can override this, but basically this is also how Network I/O works.
You ask for a file to be Network transferred and it gets Cluster 0 into main memory, also say 4096 bytes, the driver then compares this with the MTU size, say 1500 and FRAGMENTS the Cluster into three Fragments 1-1500 bytes, 2-1500 bytes, 3-1096 bytes.
On the receiving end, those Fragments have to collected, and reassembled from those 3 fragments into Cluster 0 say of a similar File System and posted down to the drive or device according to it's sizing and requirements.
Now, Network Cards have gotten much more sophisticated, Smarter and can do much work CPU0 used to have to do.
But you get it don't you? There is much going on underneath, than what most folks know; simply because most devices just can't take that much data, all at once, and deal with it.
When I compare Jumbo Size and File System Cluster size it explains much.
Oh no, I’m only doing this on the LAN. Also you can’t do jumbo frames on the wifi as I discovered!
> internet service has gone down when the grid power went down about 5 times in the past 7 or 8 months
Around here, T-Mobile fixed base backup service is $20 a month.
I think Starlink has articulated their prices quite a bit too, but not that low.
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