The 2022 Winter Olympics have allowed everyone to see the joy of 5G high-speed surfing. The development of communication technology, faster and faster transmission rates, is constantly redefining the way the world is connected.
The IEEE predicts that device connectivity will grow from 18 billion (2017) to 28.5 billion devices (by 2022). The number of Internet users will "soar from 3.4 billion in 2017 to 4.8 billion in 2022." The explosive growth of network traffic has not only driven mobile communications to accelerate into the 5G era, but also spawned the collective upgrading of broadband and other networks.
In recent years, major operators have launched three gigabit and all-gigabit solutions, allowing gigabit 5G, gigabit broadband, and gigabit Wi-Fi to enter thousands of households and become the same basic configuration of households as water, electricity, and coal.
If the internet speed also has a chain of contempt, is "all gigabit" the envy of the pyramid tip? For ordinary people, it is true. However, there are still some people who have taken the lead in "10,000".
At present, the network infrastructure of cloud data centers has reached the 400Gbps standard, that is, 400 times the bandwidth of 5G, and is still moving towards 800G and 1600G. However, for individual home users, there is not so much data throughput, and the 10 Gigabit network is already enough to stand out at the moment.
Every fundamental change in the field of communication has brought earth-shaking changes to our lives. Ten years ago, we could not imagine that the mobile Internet supported by 4G would have such a scale, creating countless Internet giants and unicorns; 5G is also accelerating the transformation of thousands of industries, constantly spawning a variety of innovative application scenarios. So, how will 10 Gigabit Communications enter the consumer market change our way of life?
Ethernet, why has it become the soil of the 10 Gigabit network?
If you don't consider the cost, the surf speed is of course the faster the better, standing at the head of the technology tide such as you, may have been eager to dial the operator's phone: 10 Gigabit package to get faster, to your distinguished users to get a copy.
At this time, the other party is also estimated to be very difficult, 10 Gigabit network is generally an enterprise-level service, private customization is not impossible, you have to add money. Add how much, you just follow the scale of the university education network.
At this time, if there is no real mine at home, most people should have stopped. There is also a group of people, with knowledge is power, relying on the 10 Gigabit switch of some enterprise server rooms, commonly known as "picking up garbage", and saving up the 10 Gigabit network at home.
Ordinary people want to use the 10,000-gigabit network, how can they be so humble.
Here it is necessary to explain a question: why is 10 Gigabit network currently only achievable through Ethernet?
As mentioned earlier, at present, 5G cellular networks, wireless network WiFi-6, and home broadband have realized the commercial use of gigabit services. If you also want higher network speeds, you can only hope for the local area network, that is, the intranet.
In simple terms, it is to let their desktops, laptops, mobile phones, game consoles, tablets, smart TVs, smart sockets, storage devices NAS and other devices communicate through an internal small network. Internal local area networks are often built with Ethernet.
Explaining the concept and history of Ethernet is really boring. Cisco, known as the Golden Gate Bridge of the Internet, believes that this knowledge does not have a strong meaning in their curriculum. Interested readers can search for themselves, and we will directly talk about why you must rely on Ethernet today if you want a "10 Gigabit" experience.
First of all, compared with the WiFi using radio waves, Ethernet transmits data directly through cables and optical cables, which is stable and reliable anti-interference, and it is less likely to drop the chain when the game is online.
Secondly, the cellular mobile network, the latest generation of mobile communication network 5G, the peak theoretical transmission speed of about 100Mbps, the transmission capacity is 10 times higher than 5G 6G, but can reach the 10 Gigabit standard, but it is still under development, and wide commercial use is far away.
(Original Ethernet system diagram)
Since these two are not drama, there is always hope for fiber-to-home fixed network broadband. However, home broadband networks are often complex in architecture, connected to the extranet through the local area network, network construction, upgrade, expansion are more troublesome, has begun to keep up with the speed of computer terminal iteration, has become the main bottleneck of stuck user experience. For example, in 2020, Apple has added a 10Gb 10 Gigabit Ethernet interface to the M1Macmini, but if the user does not have a 10 Gigabit network, it is still blind.
In contrast, the Institute of Ethernet, Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) proposed the implementation of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) on copper cables during November 2002. In 2005, the IEEE made 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) the fastest Ethernet standard in local area networks (LANs) in standard 802.3x. At the end of 2017, the IEEE approved the 200GbE and 400GbE standards to meet the higher bandwidth needs of cloud service providers and hyperscale data center operators.
Since being adopted by the IEEE as a standard in 1982, Ethernet has experienced 40 years of ups and downs, with the comprehensive advantages of continuous evolution, high speed, stability and reliability, becoming the most widely used network technology in the world, and also taking the lead in standing on the cusp of the tide of home 10 Gigabit networks.
Is the need for 10 Gigabit in the home real?
Perhaps many people will feel that the current gigabit-level network is completely enough, and there is nothing to download files, play games, and watch videos. It's also a waste of money to have that high speed.
Indeed, 10 Gigabit Ethernet can provide 10Gbps transmission rates, transmitting data at a rate of 10 billion bits per second, and for many years, it mainly served data centers, enterprise local area networks and other scenarios.
For example, schools need high-definition video applications to support digital teaching, applications such as LiDAR and sensors in the digital military, which require a large amount of data throughput; or the continuous development of the Internet of Things in enterprise parks, which is becoming more and more sensitive to network latency... At this time, the network bandwidth of the metropolitan area network is insufficient, and the loss of packets and equipment crashes will cause relatively large losses. Therefore, it is often solved through 10 Gigabit LOCAL AREA NETWORKs. As one of the "new infrastructure" hyperconverged digital infrastructure, there is also a technology trend of converged Ethernet.
But for home users, is the 10 Gigabit network a bit of a chicken knife?
In fact, from the results can be reversed, if the gigabit network is really enough, there will not be so many gigabit network DIY small experts. This is mainly because some people may actually have cattle in their homes:
If you are a fan of AAA games and high-definition video, in the face of 4K and 8K picture quality, it takes tens of minutes to download and copy a 4K blockbuster under the Gigabit network, which is really difficult for people who are accustomed to watching seconds by second.
If you are a content creator, or an up master who uses love to generate electricity, affected by the epidemic, more and more audio and video, 3D, and game studios have begun to work remotely, so every day the video materials and program files are uploaded and downloaded to centralized storage, which greatly affects work efficiency. At this time, the ultra-wide bandwidth provided by 10GbE can open a huge design file in a few seconds, which can indeed achieve easier collaboration.
If you are a hardware enthusiast who has purchased a notebook with a 10 Gigabit interface, you can't bear to waste your potential, you can only do your own food and clothing, build a 10 Gigabit intranet to make them glow.
If you have a large number of storage needs such as learning materials, you have spent a lot of money to buy a hard disk with a read and write speed of hundreds of megabytes, but the file transfer speed cannot keep up with the rhythm of storage hardware. In the 10 Gigabit network, it is easy to swallow at a rate of 1.25GB/s, and copy a 20GB file to another computer in 20 seconds.
At this time, you may feel that the more bandwidth, the better.
In addition to being fast, 10 Gigabit Ethernet comes with a number of other benefits. For example, the expansion is flexible, and the mid-range Ethernet switch is directly used as the access device, which simplifies the complexity of network configuration, and the strong adaptability can automatically identify various network applications such as data services, voice services, and video services, and provide bandwidth guarantee.
The heart is not as good as action, this is the beginning of the "garbage", no, build a 10 gigabit network.
Take a 10 Gigabit network, a total of several steps?
The hands-on freaks may have begun to scramble to deploy a 10 Gigabit network of their own families. Don't worry, although DIY is not uncommon in 2022, the reason why 10 Gigabit network has no large-scale popularity is because there is no small threshold, which not only tests the thickness of the wallet, but also requires technical reserves.
The first is fiber optics. To ensure the stability of the 10 Gigabit network, it is still necessary to connect via a wired connection. At present, there are many kinds of common twisted pairs, 10 Gigabit networks generally use class vii wires, 2002 ISO/IEC118017 class/F class standards recognized in a twisted pair, the transmission rate can reach 10Gbps. If it is not a newly renovated home, rewiring also needs to consider the network cable that was previously laid, which is extremely troublesome. This also reminds us that network deployment is best or one-step in place, and the best is selected within the affordable range to reduce the cost of secondary transformation.
Second, 10 Gigabit routers. Routers can maximize the performance of broadband, is the center of the home network, and now many operators will give away WiFi-6 routers to Gigabit packages. If you want wireless devices to enjoy 10 Gigabit speeds, then 10 Gigabit routers are essential. On e-commerce platforms, a high-end 10 Gigabit router often costs thousands of yuan.
Next, 10 Gigabit network cards. The network card is the interface between the computer and the transmission medium in the local area network, and the computer must have a 10 Gigabit network card to run at a speed of 10Gbps. At present, some brands of computers such as Apple have built-in 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports and support optional 10 Gigabit network cards. Of course, speed is time, and time is money, so you have to add money.
By the way, some short video producers, game studios, game enthusiasts, etc., may also need a NAS that supports 10 Gigabit transmission speeds to enable resource management, backup, and sharing to achieve better read and write speeds.
It's not hard to see that money not only limits imagination, it also limits internet speed.
However, this does not mean that ordinary people are completely out of touch with Wanzhao.
In a rapidly changing society, the digital construction of thousands of industries and the popularization of remote office and other working methods will spawn a large number of new network applications, greatly increasing the demand for network bandwidth. Wanzhao Network will eventually walk down the unattainable pyramid tip and enter the mass consumer market. The increase in the rate of the basic network is like fertile soil, allowing a new generation of Internet applications and services to flourish, such as digital people or metaversities.
As Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, put it: "Designing Ethernet as a local network with open, industrialized standards is more significant than inventing Ethernet itself." ”
The road to technology popularization that can benefit everyone is more worth looking forward to than a groundbreaking invention.