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Comment by GeertJohan

6 hours ago

A Framework expansion card was also announced this week. https://frame.work/nl/en/products/wisdpi-10g-ethernet-expans...

That link notes:

"Card supports 10Gbit/s and 10/100/1000/2500/5000/10000Mbit/s Ethernet"

Nice to see; some NICs are shedding 10/100 support. Apparently, it's not necessary to do this, even in a low cost device.

  • 100 mode saved me once when I really really really needed to have a connection in that moment, but the ethernet cable glued to the wall that I was using had only three out of eight wires even functioning.

  • 100 is needed for embedded stuff, it'd render a lot of devices unusable (wiznet chips are popular and are 100 only). That'd suck.

  • There are plenty of embedded chips which only provide RMII. No RGMII or alternatives.

  • Lots of industrial sensors and devices only do 4 wire 100BASE-TX so if there's no fallback to that it would be a paperweight in those situations.

  • -

    • Isn’t that only relevant for network topologies that rely heavily on broadcasting to multiple nodes. Eg token ring, WiFi and powerline adapters?

      For regular Ethernet, the switch will have a table of which IPs are on which NIC and thus can dynamically send packets at the right transmission protocols supported by those NICs without degrading the service of other NICs.

      1 reply →

    • We have switches now, hubs just don't exist anymore. Switches are not affected by some devices having a lower speed.

    • Is that really true? If so, is there a saner way to handle this than upgrade all the things to 10GBE? Like a POE ethernet condom that interfaces with both network and devices at native max speeds without the core network having to degrade?

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