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[phi2008]

IEEE sets new Ethernet standard that brings 5X the speed without disruptive cable changes

As expected the IEEE has ratified a new Ethernet specification -- IEEE P802.3bz – that defines 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T, boosting the current top speed of traditional Ethernet five-times without requiring the tearing out of current cabling.

The Ethernet Alliance wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks.

Indeed, the wireless component may be the most significant implication of the standard as 2.5G and 5G Ethernet will allow connectivity to 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points, considered by many to be the real driving force behind bringing up the speed of traditional NBase-T products.

...

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3124948/lan-wan/ieee-sets-new-ethernet-standard-that-brings-5x-the-speed-without-disruptive-cable-changes.html#tk.twt_nww

My home network is centred around a couple of 1Gb and 10Gb switches so unless this turns out to result in very cheap equipment I'm not sure I'd feel the need to go down this route.

[licquorice]

I'm intrigued to know whatever it is that you transfer on your home network that would even make you consider 5Gbps interfaces.

[phi2008]

My, average, FreeNAS box transfers at around 5Gb/s - I could go higher if I wasn't a skinflint and spent some money on it.

[licquorice]

My, average, FreeNAS box transfers at around 5Gb/s - I could go higher if I wasn't a skinflint and spent some money on it.

That doesn't answer the question.

[phi2008]

What do you think a NAS is used for? In my case I've run out of space on SSDs, which I prefer, and I can't afford to start buying terabytes of SSD storage. A trade off is to shift as much of my storage, including things like virtual machines which occupy a lot of space, onto NAS storage with a high performance network link. Not quite as good as an SSD but a bit better than a typical single hard drive.

10Gb network cards sell for $17 a pop, people can buy two and do a point to point link to another machine, like a NAS, for peanuts - there's not much good reason to look a gift horse in the mouth.

So to get around to addressing your dubious point that not all transfers benefit from a 10Gb link, well not all your transfers will benefit from your 1Gb(?) link - but I'll assume you aren't going to downgrade to 100Mb even though it might save money.