Technical difference between 10Mpbs 100Mbps and gig internet

[HT21]

Can LTT  tear down a couple of network devices and show us the parts of the product that might determine the maximum speed. And then as a result, show us how you would upgrade a 100Mbs to gig ?

I'm thinking in particular a VoIP/ Sop phone, as many of these are limited to 100. And former a bottle neck to the PC in a wired networked office

[Enderman]

You don't upgrade 100 to 1000, you buy a new NIC.

It's all integrated on a microchip.

[Master Disaster]

Not possible. The differences are inside the ICs on the card and its not like you can swap ICs out since they rely on logic, controllers and other stuff like ROMs to function.

[HT21]

Thanks for the reply  you say not possible but it's probably possible to replace the logic controllers on the devices. But is that the only bottle neck.. that would be really interesting to see.

 

Is it possible to upgrade older devices ? I would have thought so, but involve some soldering and swapping out of parts. But then does the software running some of the devices limit it too.

[HT21]

7 minutes ago, Enderman said:

You don't upgrade 100 to 1000, you buy a new NIC.

It's all integrated on a 

But it would be interesting to find out if it's possible  and how it would be done. 

 

 

[Eigenvektor]

7 minutes ago, HT21 said:

I'm thinking in particular a VoIP/ Sop phone, as many of these are limited to 100. And former a bottle neck to the PC in a wired networked office

If you're on a switched network, then a single device being limited to 100 Mbps is not a bottleneck to any other device on the network (unless you're communicating with that device). The other devices are still able to communicate using Gbps with one another.

 

As others have said, you can't really upgrade the speed of a network device. For a PC you would buy a different NIC. If you have an integrated device like a phone, you'd buy a new phone.

Just now, HT21 said:

Thanks for the reply  you say not possible but it's probably possible to replace the logic controllers on the devices. But is that the only bottle neck.. that would be really interesting to see.

Aside from the NIC, the rest of the device (e.g. CPU/RAM/storage) also needs to be able to handle the additional speed. If the phone's CPU (or microcontroller) isn't fast enough to handle the additional speed you'll not get Gbps speeds.

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, HT21 said:

Is it possible to upgrade older devices ? I would have thought so, but involve some soldering and swapping out of parts. But then does the software running some of the devices limit it too.

If you're Ben Heck, maybe but even then I have my doubts. For us mere mortals the answer is very much no.

[HT21]

Just now, Eigenvektor said:

If you're on a switched network, then a single device being limited to 100 Mbps is not a bottleneck to any other device on the network (unless you're communicating with that device). The other devices are still able to communicate using Gbps with one another.

 

As others have said, you can't really upgrade the speed of a network device. For a PC you would buy a different NIC. If you have an integrated device like a phone, you'd buy a new phone.

Aside from the NIC, the rest of the device (e.g. CPU/RAM/storage) also needs to be able to handle the additional speed. If the phone's CPU (or microcontroller) isn't fast enough to handle the additional speed you'll not get Gbps speeds.

Thanks:) that's fairly clear to me. 

 

I do some network set-ups for offices and upgrades etc. Most office still have wired desk phones, with a shorter patch cable to a desktop PC and the vast majority of the phones appear to be limited to 100Mbps.  Hence my wondering :))

[HT21]

7 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

If you're on a switched network, then a single device being limited to 100 Mbps is not a bottleneck to any other device on the network (unless you're communicating with that device). The other devices are still able to communicate using Gbps with one another.

 

As others have said, you can't really upgrade the speed of a network device. For a PC you would buy a different NIC. If you have an integrated device like a phone, you'd buy a new phone.

Aside from the NIC, the rest of the device (e.g. CPU/RAM/storage) also needs to be able to handle the additional speed. If the phone's CPU (or microcontroller) isn't fast enough to handle the additional speed you'll not get Gbps speeds.

On the bottle neck term.  Most offices I work on have wire VOIP phones, which are the source of the limitation .

 

So imagine gig internet all the way to every desk.  But then they plug in a VoIP phone and then a patch to the PC .. bam every one is basically now on 100Mbps..   because everyone has put ancient phones between them and everything

[Eigenvektor]

2 minutes ago, HT21 said:

I do some network set-ups for offices and upgrades etc. Most office still have wired desk phones, with a shorter patch cable to a desktop PC and the vast majority of the phones appear to be limited to 100Mbps.  Hence my wondering :))

Gotcha, yeah that's what we use in office as well. You'd have to replace the phone's internal NIC and most likely the associated microcontrollers as well to be able to handle the additional speed. I don't think it would be cost-effective to do that.

 

Especially in a professional environment doing this kind of modification would be a big no-no (at least where I live) due to insurance risks. If the modifications cause a fire, you're very much on the line. Buying a new phone is the safer and probably more cost effective option.

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Gotcha, yeah that's what we use in office as well. You'd have to replace the phone's internal NIC and most likely the associated microcontrollers as well to be able to handle the additional speed. I don't think it would be cost-effective to do that.

 

Especially in a professional environment doing this kind of modification would be a big no-no (at least where I live) due to insurance risks. If the modifications cause a fire, you're very much on the line. Buying a new phone is the safer and probably more cost effective option.

Aside from that, I don't understand why Gigabit VoIP is even a consideration. 100base is more than enough to handle a simple voice call.

[Eigenvektor]

Just now, Master Disaster said:

Aside from that, I don't understand why Gigabit VoIP is even a consideration. 100base is more than enough to handle a simple voice call.

The issue is that only the phone is directly connected to the network and the PC is then plugged into the phone. The phone essentially acts as a "bridge" for the network. So the phone being limited to 100 Mbps also limits the PC plugged into the phone to 100 Mbps even though the PC would be capable of Gbps.

[HT21]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Aside from that, I don't understand why Gigabit VoIP is even a consideration. 100base is more than enough to handle a simple voice call.

It's not needed for the VOIP service of course, that use next to no data. Its the limitation on the phone itself that bugs me.  Despite your whole network being gig, most phones will limit the the rest of the through put

Edited November 29, 2020 by HT21

[Enderman]

2 hours ago, HT21 said:

But it would be interesting to find out if it's possible  and how it would be done. 

 

 

Well step 1 is to find a controller that supports 1000mbps.

Step 2 is to get an electrical engineering degree and design the circuit that interfaces that controller to your ethernet port and whatever input method on your computer you want to use.

Step 3 is to order a custom made PCB that you designed in step 2 and reflow the controller onto it using a reflow oven and solder the SMD components to your newly designed circuit board.

[theonly500]

So you have basically 3 Options to remove that bottleneck:
1. Run a second set of ethernet cableing to the desk.
2. Buy a switch for each desk.

3. Buy new VOIP Phones.
All of these Options are a hard sell for a client.
In the End to sell these you would have to analyze Networktrafficvolume to figure out if that is really needed.
I've built Networks for live entertainment, where a bottlenecked connection is a show stopper.
But I've also had Datatransfers around that network in the preparation stage.

 

If the applications aren't "timecritical" it doesn't make sense to upgrade the Ethernet link. 100Mbit is plenty fast for most office applications. If filesharing isn't done locally. And even then, i found it to be easier, to just use a thumb drive. If filesharing goes offsite, then you have to think about the out/inbound connection as well. If that is less than twice or thrice the amount a singular networkclient can send and recieve, then the bottleneck with the VOIP Phone won't be to noticable.

[charlie_root]

The amount of difficulty, cost, and risk involved with swapping out and resoldering the NIC on a desk phone is significantly higher than just running an extra cable or hanging a switch off of the existing cable. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

A VoIP phone I'd expect to be using a SoC, and the NIC will either be embedded in that SoC or only have a certain amount of bandwidth between the SoC and the NIC.  If its designed for 100Mbit, its unlikely the interface out of the SoC is faster than that.

Plus if the phone is applying QoS to the PC so that VoIP traffic gets top priority, you're then also potentially talking about the CPU capability of the phone too.

If on the other hand the phone just a small switch built-in it might be doable, but it would cost more than buying an external switch.  Although I'd expect the phone to interface with the switch in some way, which is not going to work if the firmware is expecting the old switch chip and you replaced it with something else.  Plus you'd have to find a way to cram in a different isolation transformer for the extra pins, etc.

At the end of the day, even if you COULD do it, it makes no sense to actually do so.

[HT21]

Thanks for all the tips guys.

All the ideas are valid.

As in most offices running new/ additional cables is rather hard work. 

Putting a second switch on the desk(s) is rather impractical, as the phones run off POE, so putting a switch imbetween kind of messes up that.

Gigabyte VOIPs are starting at about £100 so I could look in to that for select desktops. 

 

I'll read up more on voip phones I work with just out of curiosity to see how they handle the passing through of data to the computers NIC.