Image source @ Visual China
Text | Ray Tech leitech
In recent years, network communication related technologies have developed rapidly, in addition to 5G in the mobile field, in the home broadband scenario, New features such as WiFi6 have been rapidly popularized, and high-speed broadband coverage is also expanding. In this context, consumer groups have ushered in a wave of router upgrade boom, and traditional router manufacturers, Xiaomi Huawei and other "spoilers" have continuously launched new products. At the same time, smartphones, notebooks and other devices that require wireless networking have added support for network features such as WiFi6.
At the same time, many flagship router products have quietly upgraded the 2.5G interface. In this regard, there are two voices in some user groups, one is that the 2.5G mouth is a cattle knife for cutting chickens, the gigabit mouth can still meet the current mainstream demand, and consumers should not pay for unnecessary costs; the other is that 2.5G is just needed, gigabit mouth has become obsolete, and 2.5G should become the standard of flagship routing.
Seeing this, there may be small partners who are still confused. Indeed, 2.5G interfaces have appeared on routers, that is, in the past two years, and the related network discussions have been limited to some heavy users. Xiao Lei here combines his actual experience and views to share his views.
01 What is the 2.5G interface?
Literally, a 2.5G port is a network interface with a 2.5Gbps rate, and the actual rate is usually calculated at 2500Mbps. Converted into a value that we better understand, it is about 312.5MB/s, which is the theoretical upper limit rate of downloading or uploading from networked devices during daily use.
In the early years, routers were usually divided into 100-megabit and gigabit products, that is, routers with 100Mbps ports and routers with 1000Mbps ports. In recent years, the technical development trend of routers has several key points, that is, the transition from 100-megabit routers to gigabit routers, single-frequency 2.4GHz routers to 2.4GHz + 5GHz dual-band routers, and WiFi6 has gradually become the standard.
The emergence of 2.5Gbps ports is undoubtedly a great increase in the upper limit of network transmission rate. Routers that support 2.5Gbps ports are now on the market, usually equipped with a 2.5G port + multiple Gigabit ports. This unique 2.5G port is either a dedicated WAN port or a WAN/LAN customization.
Here is a brief explanation of the difference between the WAN port and the LAN port, the former can be understood as the network port, that is, the interface between the router and the broadband optical cat network cable connection; the latter can be understood as the outlet, and the wired device connected to the network with the router is connected through it, such as desktop computers, NAS, subroutes, etc.
02 With a 2.5G port, will the network speed soar?
As mentioned earlier, the network speed provided by the 2.5G port can theoretically reach up to 312.5MB/s, which is far beyond the imagination of the average person. However, in light of the actual situation, it is very unlikely to achieve this rate. Routers with 2.5G ports only increase the upper limit of network speed, and to have this rate, you must first have such a large broadband.
Currently, the highest rate of broadband we can handle is usually 1000Mbps. Of course, some cities in China have opened 2000Mbps broadband pilots, and the speed is also 250MB/s, which has not reached the limit of 2.5Gbps ports, but it is also relatively close. But in fact, the implementation of 2000Mbps home broadband is now multi-dialing, that is, two 1000Mbps broadbands are aggregated together, providing a single 2.5G port is very small. Therefore, most users who handle 2000Mbps broadband get a light cat with two 1000Mbps ports.
In other words, even if we have a router with a 2.5Gbps interface, there is no way to make the 2000Mbps broadband work. For 2000Mbps broadband users, a more practical option is to buy a router that supports dual WANs, and a single port rate of 1000Mbps is enough.
Therefore, regarding the 2.5Gbps port, the download rate imagined by ordinary users will hardly occur.
03 2.5G port more practical value, intranet
In the popular science promotion of various brands, WiFi6 has a large number of new technical advantages, which can bring a better network experience. For ordinary users, a WiFi6 mobile phone with a WiFi6 router can theoretically run more than 2000 megabytes of wireless network speed, which may be the most intuitive experience upgrade. But as we said earlier, most of the broadband can not reach this rate, and it is unrealistic to expect it to bring about a surge in network speed. The same is true for the 2.5Gbps port, but if we look away from the extranet and onto the intranet transmission, we can find its usefulness.
The intranet mentioned here is simply a local area network composed of multiple networked devices on a router, which can transmit data to each other. Even if we pull out the light cat, it will not affect the operation of the intranet. The intranet uses a network speed of more than 300MB/s, which is naturally NAS.
As a private network disk, the bottleneck of the file transfer rate is usually the interface and network card. Xiao Lei has connected to the NAS with a 100-megabit router before, and the steady rate of 10MB/s makes people doubt life. After switching to gigabit routing, the rate of copying large files soared to more than 100 MB/s, and the experience naturally rose a lot.
However, in terms of mechanical hard disks, the theoretical rate of a single disk is up to about 200MB/s, and gigabit ports and gigabit network ports cannot theoretically meet the needs. Moreover, in the wireless scene, it is not uncommon for mobile phones and computers that support WiFi6 to run at a speed of more than 2000Mbps. At this time, the gigabit port of the router is easy to become a bottleneck.
Therefore, in the current situation, the more practical use of the router's 2.5G port is to use it as a LAN port for NAS or NAS-like devices (such as connecting to a PC and enabling file sharing). The cost of upgrading the 2.5G network card for such devices will not be very high.
Conclusion: The middle and low end are casual, and the flagship store is standard
At this point, the discussion on the 2.5G mouth can have a preliminary conclusion.
First of all, at this stage, the effect of the 2.5G port on breaking the existing actual network speed limit is almost zero, and it is unrealistic to expect it to bring qualitative changes to network speed. Secondly, the experience improvement effect of the 2.5Gbps port on NAS and other devices will be very obvious, and even called just needed. Therefore, whether you need a 2.5G port on the router, the key is to see if there is a NAS class demand. If so, it is recommended to give preference to products that can be customized as LAN ports.
In addition, for flagship routers and low-end products, Xiao Lei believes that there should also be different needs. For low-end products, limited by factors such as cost, the router is more critical or to do a good job of basic network performance, and the cost of subsequent upgrades and replacements of users is not high.
But for high-end flagship products, the 2.5G port should be standard. On the one hand, in the future, higher-rate broadband will gradually become popular, and the 2.5G port is a preparation for the future, which cannot be used now, and may not be used in the future. On the other hand, the user group that chooses to buy flagship routers will usually have deeper needs, and the 2.5G port should not be castrated.
Judging from the trend of technological development, it may only be a matter of time before the mainstream broadband breaks through gigabit in the future. If the time is extended to a longer distance, even the future 10 Gigabit network card and 10 Gigabit broadband will be commonplace. However, compared with the transition from 100 megabit broadband to gigabit broadband, at present, the experience improvement brought by 2000M and even higher broadband is marginally decreasing. The reason for this may be the same as 5G, that is, higher rates can not find new application scenarios.
Applications such as NAS are still in a relatively niche user group and cannot become the driving force for ordinary users to upgrade router products. The popularity of 2.5G ports may not wait until after the next major innovation of network technology.
Anyway, Xiao Lei finally recommended several router products with 2.5G ports, there is no advertising here, just for everyone's reference.