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[dee.jay]

So I work for an ISP and thus do get to test a lot of things. Whilst yes, my incoming internet connection tops out at 400Mbps at very best between Starlink and VDSL, I do have a 2.5Gbps backbone from the switch downstairs (where the incoming Starlink/VDSL devices are connected) to my office upstairs where my router lives (I love a good VLAN, me). The switches are the new Mikrotik CRS310 (https://mikrotik.com/product/crs310_8g_2s_in) that each have 2 x 10Gbps ports, so these will be in place for years to come at this point.

I am expecting Virgin Media to be turned on shortly, and I have seen evidence of Openreach finally doing something though willing to bet they'll not touch my street as we're DIG. Maybe they will because VM did? Who knows. But 1+ Gbps is on the way, so this was worth it for me.

[Chunkers]

[dee.jay]

What gets really interesting is when you start going above 1Gbps...

I was downloading from Steam to a gaming laptop over XGSPON in the lab this week - the laptop CPU tops out whilst downloading at 800Mbps.

I have a steam cache at home and a 10Gbps network, my 12 core Ryzen 9 5900X 100% @ 3Gbps... Those are heavily CPU bound too but interesting to note that multigig will bring challenges in ways we never thought.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I believe they may have implemented their compression on LAN transfers recently too as they completely broke it for me.

I went from Steam being able to download from another PC on my LAN at line rate, to it being slower than just downloading from scratch over Gigabit.  My guess being the PC that is sending has to do the compression vs it already being compressed on the servers.

Its dumb as I have a REALLY fast CPU on my gaming rig so they have effectively broken the feature for everyone.  I guess they figured that people on Gigabit wont bother using LAN transfer compared to people on much slower broadband.  Bad logic IMO as surely some of those people on slower broadband will also have slower PCs that wont be up to doing the compression.

[Chrysalis]

What gets really interesting is when you start going above 1Gbps...

I was downloading from Steam to a gaming laptop over XGSPON in the lab this week - the laptop CPU tops out whilst downloading at 800Mbps.

I have a steam cache at home and a 10Gbps network, my 12 core Ryzen 9 5900X 100% @ 3Gbps... Those are heavily CPU bound too but interesting to note that multigig will bring challenges in ways we never thought.

There is two implementations of onboard ethernet.  I opened a thread about it on a overclocking website and was given some useful info.

I had noticed on my 9900k motherboard, there is 2 intel gigabit adaptors, and I was using the one that was an older chip and marked as higher energy use.  Its CPU usage is really low.

What raised my attention in my new PC with a much more powerful CPU running a onboard realtek 2.5gbit in gigabit mode it has huge CPU usage proportionally to the old setup.  So called features like interrupt moderation and offloading made no real dent, and those all turned off on the 9900k system anyway.

It turns out my onboard on the 9900k, is a full onboard, the full network chipset is there so has proper offloading, but on my new motherboard its some half cut cost implementation where, there is enough on there for the network to function but the traffic is processed differently because the full chipset isnt available, I was asked to test the 2nd onboard on the 9900k and sure enough that had the same symptoms.  I then purchased an addon card and it has considerably lower CPU usage for gigabit throughput vs my onboard realtek, even with all customisable offloading options disabled.

These onboard implementations might not be the full shebang.

[Alex Atkin UK]

These onboard implementations might not be the full shebang.

There's also queues.  Better NICs have more queues, which means packets can be assigned to more threads/CPU cores.

Its also typically a thing that Realtek have higher CPU usage than Intel.

This is not generally what slows down Steam though, its their compression, games mostly comprised of small files and disk IO.

[dee.jay]

There is two implementations of onboard ethernet.  I opened a thread about it on a overclocking website and was given some useful info.

I had noticed on my 9900k motherboard, there is 2 intel gigabit adaptors, and I was using the one that was an older chip and marked as higher energy use.  Its CPU usage is really low.

What raised my attention in my new PC with a much more powerful CPU running a onboard realtek 2.5gbit in gigabit mode it has huge CPU usage proportionally to the old setup.  So called features like interrupt moderation and offloading made no real dent, and those all turned off on the 9900k system anyway.

It turns out my onboard on the 9900k, is a full onboard, the full network chipset is there so has proper offloading, but on my new motherboard its some half cut cost implementation where, there is enough on there for the network to function but the traffic is processed differently because the full chipset isnt available, I was asked to test the 2nd onboard on the 9900k and sure enough that had the same symptoms.  I then purchased an addon card and it has considerably lower CPU usage for gigabit throughput vs my onboard realtek, even with all customisable offloading options disabled.

These onboard implementations might not be the full shebang.

That is interesting but particularly with Steam there is more than just the download giong on. All the data is encrypted and compressed so that is why the CPU is 100% there. Doing SMB transfers, I get the full 10Gbit that the machine is capable of, and this is not onboard, I bought a 10Gbps Intel NIC specifcally for this testing.

Need to do more scientific tests and record some results because I think it is a very interesting topic.

[Dwight]

I got all excited because my new router supports 2.5 Gb, but then the boring rational side told me :

- Even wifi 6 (which I don't have) can barely exceed Gb network
- My internet is unlikely to ever exceed 1Gb
- Even the *cheap* 2.5 Gb switches are 5 times the cost of Gb stuff
- None of the devices on my network apart from possibly my wifes iPhone could even benefit from it and a bunch of them are still 2.4 Ghz wifi

Posting this so I can laugh at my ignorance in the future

Have you guys found a good reason to spend squllions on super duper LAN speeds?

 

C

"I Dream of 10G!" or is it a Genie in a bottle?

[Ronski]

I am expecting Virgin Media to be turned on shortly, and I have seen evidence of Openreach finally doing something though willing to bet they'll not touch my street as we're DIG. Maybe they will because VM did? Who knows. But 1+ Gbps is on the way, so this was worth it for me.

VM installed here back on 2019 IIRC, OR did a lot of our town sometime after that with FTTP, but not our estate which is DIG, and I've been reliably informed no DIG is currently scheduled anywhere, I bet they'll just leave the VDSL cabinet in place.

At least I have VM available, and just signed up for another 18 months.

[dee.jay]

VM installed here back on 2019 IIRC, OR did a lot of our town sometime after that with FTTP, but not our estate which is DIG, and I've been reliably informed no DIG is currently scheduled anywhere, I bet they'll just leave the VDSL cabinet in place.

At least I have VM available, and just signed up for another 18 months.

I think that is how it'll go for me, at least it will be XGSPON, so better than nothing I guess.

I just binned the OR VDSL, going full Starlink.

[Chrysalis]

That is interesting but particularly with Steam there is more than just the download giong on. All the data is encrypted and compressed so that is why the CPU is 100% there. Doing SMB transfers, I get the full 10Gbit that the machine is capable of, and this is not onboard, I bought a 10Gbps Intel NIC specifcally for this testing.

Need to do more scientific tests and record some results because I think it is a very interesting topic.

Oh yeah steam is an entirely new ball game, there is hash checks and compression stuff going on.

Downloading on steam on gig1 is like I am running cinebench on the PC.

[Dwight]

[HPsauce]

I can't even find a plausible reason to upgrade from copper ADSL!........

No plans whatsoever in our area to install FTTP....................

Something is bound to happen as part of the plans to get rid of POTS landlines, but I'm waiting to see on that one!

Bit of a digression from the current tenor of this thread, but I decided to upgrade, because it gives me control AND saves me money!
Weird logic maybe, but I will:
1. Install a second line, FTTC, broadband only, no phone. Should use the existing drop wire - newish so hopefully 4-core. Will need a new cable from the roof-level connector to a new master socket though as existing is 2-core flex! I'll drill the hole!
2. Transfer landline number to A&A, this should "kill" the old landline and broadband (both out of contract) but I'll check. Tidy up old master socket.
Broadband will be faster and my ongoing monthly costs reduce by almost a third. The installation costs will be recouped in about 3 months. 
I'll then see what plans are for FTTP and appropriate pricing; it "should" be cheaper than FTTC at the low end as it's simpler to supply and maintain. 

[Black Sheep]

NB - 'Newish' dropwires are 1pr only - couldn't put a definitive date on when the transition was, off the top of my bonce, perhaps 8/9yrs ago ?

[HPsauce]

Thanks for that info Black Sheep. Newish compared to the 1967 one it replaced.  Over 10 years ago at a guess. Openreach's problem.