Items tagged with Ethernet
Rivet Networks recently announced its latest Killer networking product, the Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet Controller. For the uninitiated, the very first Killer Networking cards were introduced way back in 2005 and were designed to maximize throughput and minimize ping times for gamers. While total throughput is often similar between network controllers today, Killer networking products reckon they can still deliver a superior experience through improved ping times and quality-of-service (QoS) prioritization.While the Killer lineup has shifted hands a time or two, from Bigfoot Networks to Qualcomm before being spun back out to today's Rivet Networks, the product name has attracted a lot of attention....
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Given the rapid pace of technological advancements, our PCs are now scarily efficient compared to those from just a decade ago, and of course, performance is much-improved. That is, unless we're talking about wired networking. While SATA-based solid-state drives can easily peak at 500MB/s, the Ethernet connections we use today are the same we used a decade ago: 1Gbps. If you're one of those who are fed up with not having faster Ethernet in our humble abodes, then you might like what the IEEE has just completed. A new standard, called 802.3bz, has been ratified for upcoming 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps speeds giving a boost of up to 5x over our current networks. It's worth noting that 10Gbps networks...
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It's kind of surprising that even in 2016, 10Gbps Ethernet is uncommon in the home. Over the past decade, every component in our PC has gotten faster: CPUs, GPUs, storage, USB, and even memory. But Ethernet? The vast majority of us are still rocking 1Gbps connections - a little disappointing when even a modest SATA-based SSD is spec'd at almost five times faster. There have been a few companies to come out with 10Gbps-equipped motherboards over the past couple of years, but they are still far and few between. We're bound to reach a point when 10Gbps becomes more common for us regular folk (rather than the data center) though, and ASUS is anxious to help get us there with a new board dubbed X99-E-10G...
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Apple had good intentions when it rolled out a security update for Mac OS X, but unfortunately for some iMac, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini users the update also caused their Ethernet ports to stop working. Oops! The good news is Apple was quick to issue another update that should restore full functionality. If you find that Ethernet connectivity is no longer working on your Mac, Apple says to check System Information to find out which version of "Incompatible Kernel Extension Configuration Data" is installed, which you can access in System Information under Software. If you have version 3.28.1, you need to update your Mac. Here's where things can get tricky. If you're able to use Wi-Fi, your Mac...
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The audio industry is filled to the brim with magical devices that are capable of reshaping the reality of those that dare tread within its realm. There is often utter bewilderment at the expressions some people use to converse with each other on the subject. What is the color of sound, 'clarity', 'warmth', 'coarseness'? These are also the same people that will take out a mortgage to buy a sound system, and even spend $10,000 on a single cable - yes, we're back to this chestnut again. (Update, 3/30/15: Pricing has been falling dramatically for these cables since the time the original article was posted. They are still listed, however, for thousands of dollars in 5 - 10 ft lengths) (Update, 3/30/15...
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A couple of hours before folks on the east coast could see this past Wednesday's sunrise, some found themselves battling to get webpages to load, or found themselves without Internet entirely. It'd be understandable in this situation to jump to the assumption that a DDoS has taken place, since it's become (far too) common lately, but this partial outage had nothing to do with that. Instead, it hinged entirely on aging networking equipment. BGP is a virtually unknown acronym to the end user - even those who might know a little bit about general networking - but it's integral to making the Internet work. As its Border Gateway Protocol name may suggest, BGP routers have the job of making Internet...
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At a time when many are still in awe of the speeds that can be reached with Google's Fiber service, Danish researchers have come along to show us what those fiber wires can really do. The "High-Speed Optical Communications" team at DTU Fotonik in Lyngby, Denmark, have managed to secure a world record by achieving a transfer speed of 43Tbps across fiber using just a single laser. This achievement far exceeds the previous world record, of 32Tbps. Making this world record possible is a brand-new fiber cable; unlike regular fiber which contains a single thread, or core, this new fiber contains seven. Despite that, the resulting cable is no thicker than standard fiber cables. To help put things...
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Thanks to the efforts of some MIT researchers, our use of the Transmission Control Protocol could soon experience a nice upgrade. Since its introduction decades ago, TCP has become an integral part of our networking, whether we're connecting to another PC in the same building, or out to a remote server to fetch a webpage. In fact, because of its importance, TCP is one of the most-used pieces of software in the world. A lot has changed since TCP's introduction in the mid-70s, however. We're constantly changing what sort of data we're pushing across our network wire, and as such, there's never been just "one" TCP. While the overarching idea of TCP has always been to efficiently transfer data over...
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When Google first unveiled its 1Gbit fiber Internet service last summer, it seemed unlikely that such speeds would become common anytime soon. However, there was great hope that with Google's pressure, other ISPs would be pushed towards offering their own 1Gbit services. This past April, we did see some evidence of that, with AT&T promising to roll out its own 1Gbit service in the Austin, Texas area. Things don't stop there. It seems that some of the biggest ISPs are being seriously slow to catch onto the 1Gbit option, with Verizon charging a staggering $210 in some areas for a 300Mbit/s connection. The gotcha here is that the upload is 65Mbit/s (as someone with 0.5Mbit/s home upload, it...
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At a time when some of us are finding our home Gigabit lines a bit constrictive comes some Germans from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology to help make our setups feel even more inadequate. The folks there have created a Wi-Fi solution that uses "better hardware" along with a high radio frequency of 240GHz to produce a constant connection speed of 40Gbit/s (5GB/s) at a distance of about 0.6 miles (much further than the 20 or 30 feet inside of your house). The ultra-high 240GHz frequency is required to push such heavy data, which at 40Gbit/s is about 293x faster than the theoretical maximum of 802.11n (140Mbit/s), and 47x faster than the current top-end 802.11ac (866Mbit/s)....
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We posted a rumor over the weekend that Google's high-speed Fiber Internet service should be hitting up Austin soon, and today, the company confirms it. The announcement was made in the city today, along with mayor Lee Leffingwell, and Google's decision to choose Austin to follow-up to the dual Kansas City's can be summed up in one sentence: "[Austin is] a mecca for creativity and entrepreneurialism, with thriving artistic and tech communities, as well as the University of Texas and its new medical research hospital." While that's all fine and good, there's little doubt that the jealousy of those not in Austin or Kansas City has just been amplified. However, it's great to see another...
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Only a few months after Google brought Gigabit broadband to Kansas City, Google is rumored to be gearing up for its next metropolis: Austin, Texas. Google is planning a big press conference in Austin next week. The word is that Austin and Google have an announcement to make. Google and Austin officials haven’t admitted to anything yet, but with rumors flying and a Tuesday conference planned, it’s worth taking note of. So, why all the commotion about Gigabit broadband? Speed, of course. With Gigabit broadband, you’re looking at being able to watch streaming video at higher resolutions than the 720p most streaming video is limited to. Top speeds will 100 times as fast as typical...
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The sultan of search (Google, who else?) wants the Institute of Electronics Inc. (IEEE) to implement a variable-speed Ethernet standard that would make it more efficient to transfer data between data centers and ultimately cut costs. It's a move IEEE has so far been reluctant to take on. Ron Johnson, a director of product management at Cisco, originally proposed the idea at Light Reading's Ethernet Expo and was disappointed that IEEE chose to stick with the usual single-rate format when it came to 400Gbps. Now it's Bikash Koley, Google's principal architect and manager of network architecture making noise in favor of variable-speed Ethernet. Koley's reasoning is that Google is unable to use current...
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Many have chided Apple for the lack of ports available on its high-end laptops. If you want, you can spec out a $3k+ MacBook Pro laptop... but you can't get more than two USB ports on it, no matter what sum you're ready to shell out. For hardcore power users, the limitations can become something of an annoyance, but that's where third-party accessory makers step in to fill the void. Kanex has already supplanted the outgoing AirPort Express design with the mySpot, and now the company has introduced a genius new adapter that makes up for the MBP's dearth of connectors. The new DualRole is a USB 3.0 hub + Gigabit Ethernet adapter in one. It's a small, pocket-friendly solution that plugs into a single...
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