The limit of ethernet cables?

[zFox]

I recently watched a video on ethernet cables, and they were talking about category 7 and category 8 cables,  going up to 10bgps and 40gbps.

 

My question is how far can we go in terms of speed for ethernet  cables?

 

Can we reach 100gbps?

 

Can we do 400gbps we a fat cable combining multiple lines into one?

 

Can we use another type of wiring material for more speed?

 

Can we create a new type of cat cable that has more wiring inside,  kind of like usb 3.1 gen2?

[Jurrunio]

who knows?

[LukeSavenije]

there's only one limitation to it right now: length

 

infiniband can already reach some of those speeds, so maybe rj45 soon too

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

19 minutes ago, zFox said:

Can we use another type of wiring material for more speed?

we already have optic fibers , but its not common for household applications yet.

[mariushm]

Right now you can buy 25gbps and 50gbps ethernet cards for around 180-250$ , here's a 50gbps example: link

Sure, you'll also need a QSFP28 cable, which is gonna cost probably around 50$ for a 3-5m long cable.

You can go up to 40 gbps with copper, you can get higher speeds with shorter maximum lengths (for example hdmi 2.2 can do around 42gbps max), right now the fiber top is 400 gbps but there's plans for up to 1600 gbps , and working with up to 16 pairs of fibers or something like that to achieve such speeds.

 

On copper the distance is a problem, the longer the cable more power is required to transmit the bits and stronger error correction and signal processing... if you reduce the maximum length you can do higher speeds. Fiber is easier.