[Discuss] Future-proofing a house for networking -- what to run?

[mark at buttery.org (Shirley Márquez Dúlcey)]

For me, it depends on the expected lifetime of the edge device. Right
now, for example, I don't expect any video streaming box to have a
lifetime of more than five years; by then it will be sufficiently
obsolete that it will need to be replaced. Future-proofing it isn't
important. The same applies to any smart features in TVs, disc
players, audio receivers, etc., except for very high end models that
might actually get updates.

Something that hasn't been noted is that, even in a wireless future,
you need to feed data to the wireless devices and wires are the best
way to do it. I need a WiFi access point on each floor to get good
signal quality throughout the house - plaster and lath soaks up RF -
so one of the purposes of the wires we put in the wall 15 years ago is
to feed the APs. We pulled Cat5e at the time which is good up to a
gigabit; right now I'm wishing we had pulled Cat6 but it wasn't yet
readily available when we did it. I may eventually have to pull some
better line to feed the switches and APs; the Cat5e wires will be good
enough for the end points for a while yet.

On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 3:23 PM, Dan Ritter <dsr at randomstring.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 02:36:51PM -0400, Richard Pieri wrote:
>> On 9/13/2017 11:44 AM, Robert Krawitz wrote:
>> > On Wed, 13 Sep 2017 11:38:36 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote:
>> >> 1080p video streams (MPEG-4) need about 5-8 Mbps burst bandwidth.
>> >> Gigabit Ethernet has practical throughput about 300Mbps.
>> >
>> > ???  I routinely get over 100 MB/sec (>800 Mbps) transferring files --
>> > even with scp -- between systems with fast enough disks.
>>
>> So, yeah, whole-home wiring just doesn't make sense.
>
> You go tend to your knitting.
>
> I have a family of four, plus occasional guests. If I had every
> device that could be connected to ethernet connected to wifi,
> I would spend all my time debugging wifi problems.
>
> On a Saturday afternoon, it is not unusual to see:
>
> - one person watching NetFlix.
>
> - one person watching MythTV.
>
> - one person playing a video game while listening to music from
>   YouTube.
>
> - one person trying to get work done
>
> - a bunch of wifi devices chirping away at the internet, and
>
> - a couple of backups in progress.
>
> and as for jumbo packets:
>
> $  netperf -H splat -p 20000 -l 30
> MIGRATED TCP STREAM TEST from 0.0.0.0 (0.0.0.0) port 0 AF_INET
> to splat () port 0 AF_INET : demo
> Recv   Send    Send
> Socket Socket  Message  Elapsed
> Size   Size    Size     Time     Throughput
> bytes  bytes   bytes    secs.    10^6bits/sec
>
>  87380  16384  16384    30.01     940.42
>
> $ ip l
> 2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc
> fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
>
>
> So, no, you don't need jumbo packets to get 900+Mb/s
> out of your 1000Mb/s ethernet connection. That's through
> a very boring Netgear $50 switch.
>
> -dsr-
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