you probably haven't had to think too much about what gadget to plug into what
port on your home router or network switch because they're usually all the
same speed gigabit on just about everything has
been the standard for quite a while now but it looks like this is changing as
we've started to see other speeds even on consumer level gear not just
enterprise stuff what other speeds are we talking about well we did a video a
while ago on 2.5 gigabit Ethernet which was developed as a cheaper alternative
to the much more pricey 10 gigabit revision not only are the actual 2.5
gigabit products like routers and switches and adapters cheaper but it can
run over existing cat5e cabling not redoing all of your cabling that's a
lot cheaper that's pretty appealing you don't have to rewire your entire network
in order to take advantage of speeds above one gigabit but unlike gigabit
equipment which usually just has the same speed on every port 2.5 5 and 10
gigabit devices sometimes use different speeds on different ports
but why well that depends on which gadget you're asking about for example
2.5 gigabit routers with only one 2.5
gig port are becoming more common typically that faster port is the wan
port designed to connect your modem or optical network terminal if you have
fiber so that you can take advantage of faster internet connections that have
recently become available you're going from the outside world to your router
that's your passport a 2.5 gig router will obviously support a 2 gigabit
connection the fastest commonly offered in the us these days and it can even
give you a little extra speed on a connection advertised as one gigabit if
your isp allows it but what's the point of having a 2.5 gigabit port for
incoming traffic if all the other outgoing ports are just one gigabit well
it does mean you're not going to be getting two plus gigabits on your client
devices but the faster single wan port
eliminates a bottleneck at the back end for example if you have two computers
both trying to download a huge game they could each run their downloads at around
one gigabit per second instead of less than half of that if your incoming port
was just a one port so the idea here is to allow consumers to take advantage of
some of the benefits of 2.5 gigabit without being too expensive especially
considering the vast majority of client devices like tvs and game consoles and
typical desktop computers out there right now they just they only have one
gigabit but what if your computer isn't typical what if you've kitted out with a
shiny new 2.5 gig adapter card can you
go faster well yes if you have the right
equipment and we're gonna tell you more about that right after we thank our
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zoho.com crm so if you want to pass that 2.5 gig
speed from your router to your other devices it's pretty easy to buy 2.5
gigabit network switches these days and unlike routers these tend to have all
the ports running the same speed not only are these useful for connecting any
new 2.5 gig computers you might have but they can help you if you run a home
media server multiple computers trying to access high resolution videos can do
so without back-end bottlenecking similar to the example we gave earlier
about sharing an internet connection but remember that to connect everything
together seamlessly and still have high speed backhaul you will typically need a
second higher speed Ethernet port on your router for your fancy 2.5 gigabit
switch so that's 2.5 to the outside world's internet and then another 2.5 to
the switch and although these 2.5 gig switches are significantly more
expensive than gigabit only options there's still way less money than the
faster 10 gig models which often have just one or two 10 gig ports to again
keep cost down these are designed more for enterprise settings where you need a
really high speed backbone for your network though at the time we wrote this
video there are actually a couple of 10 gigabit home routers on the market with
two supported ports each one of which features a design that
looks uncomfortably like a daddy long legs so bottom line a router with a 2.5
Gigabyte port could be useful if you have really fast internet and have
multiple folks using lots of bandwidth but the fancier stuff is probably more
in the realm of the home media server crowd
offices or other niche use cases like
having a whole den of video editors on your staff but who in the world would
have that so thanks for watching guys if you liked this video hit like hit
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