Max Internet speeds

[chudtopia]

I was wondering how fast rj45 cables can transfer data and if we have even come close to the transfer speed. Put simply, if we had a rj45 cable that can transfer as much data as it possibly can, how fast would it be. (What is the maximum theoretical transfer speed an rj45 cable can transfer data)

[Lurick]

Right now, with available equipment, 10Gbps for copper cable.

In theory? 40Gbit up to 30m with Cat8 cable

 

Fiber on the other hand is near unlimited bandwidth for single mode.

[Haraikomono]

its about the cable type that matters.

RJ45 is just the connector, look at the specific output of each cable type, start from cat5 to cat 7 and youll see the theoretical perfomance of each type

[Electronics Wizardy]

The fastest you can buy now is 10gbit. There are standards for 40gbit, but I haven't seen any products using it.

 

I think rj45/twisted pair cables are near the end of the line. fiber is cheaper, and much faster, and solves a lot of issues like interference.

[Windows7ge]

In theory if you can keep cross-talk in check you can go just about as fast as you want. With the highest current standards I know 40 Gigabit exists and I think (I might be wrong here) that 100 Gigabit is possible. 

[Lurick]

Just now, Windows7ge said:

In theory if you can keep cross-talk in check you can go just about as fast as you want. With the highest current standards I know 40 Gigabit exists and I think (I might be wrong here) that 100 Gigabit is possible. 

100Gbit over DAC but not copper 8P8C wire that I'm aware of. I know there was talk of in theory hitting 100Gbit over 8P8C cable but I've never seen that come to fruition and you're talking mammoth amounts of heat too.

[Chris Pratt]

Just waiting on quantum tunneling...

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

100Gbit over DAC but not copper 8P8C wire that I'm aware of. I know there was talk of in theory hitting 100Gbit over 8P8C cable but I've never seen that come to fruition and you're talking mammoth amounts of heat too.

I think moving forward this is why technology moved to fiber. Light has so much more potential for maximum theoretical bandwidth along with being invulnerable to cross-talk with other fibers, invulnerable to electromagnetic interference, and transfers at high speed over much longer distances with little to no packet loss compared to copper implementations.

[Lurick]

28 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

I think moving forward this is why technology moved to fiber. Light has so much more potential for maximum theoretical bandwidth along with being invulnerable to cross-talk with other fibers, invulnerable to electromagnetic interference, and transfers at high speed over much longer distances with little to no packet loss compared to copper implementations.

Yah, and less power consumption too. A 10G typical fiber SFP+ will pull up to 1.5w of power, a copper variant will pull 2.5w of power. Multiply that by 48 per box and that's a lot of extra power draw and heat to dissipate too. Of course fiber isn't immune to this issue either, part of the issue with 400G QSFP is there is a lot of heat to dissipate as well so it's making some box configurations challenging so I wouldn't be surprised if 800G brought a lot of co-packaged optics when that rolls out and if not then I definitely see 1.6Tbps interfaces being on co-packaged optics for sure.

[Windows7ge]

4 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Yah, and less power consumption too. A 10G typical fiber SFP+ will pull up to 1.5w of power, a copper variant will pull 2.5w of power. Multiply that by 48 per box and that's a lot of extra power draw and heat to dissipate too. Of course fiber isn't immune to this issue either, part of the issue with 400G QSFP is there is a lot of heat to dissipate as well so it's making some box configurations challenging so I wouldn't be surprised if 800G brought a lot of co-packaged optics when that rolls out and if not then I definitely see 1.6Tbps interfaces being on co-packaged optics for sure.

At least when it comes to scaling in a parallel fashion you can set it up with Link Aggregation. That way you don't need to depend on a singular super fast (but very hot) interface you can spread that load over a series of slower cooler interfaces.

 

And I totally agree with fiber > copper when it comes to heat dissipation. That's partly why I rigged my entire 10Gig network with fiber instead of copper. Client NIC's don't get as hot.

 

If I make the move up to 40Gig I plan to stick with fiber. Have to source some good NICs and switches though.