Aquantia Announces Multi-Gig Ethernet Controllers, Coming Soon To ASUS Boards

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Aquantia Announces Multi-Gig Ethernet Controllers, Coming Soon To ASUS Boards

2019 is looking to be the year where we will finally see Multi-Gig Ethernet controllers appearing on desktop/enthusiast motherboards rather than Gigabit Ethernet controllers. Aquantia is using CES to show off its new Multi-Gig controllers and has already courted ASUS to use their chips on forthcoming motherboards...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Aquantia-AQtion-MultiG-Mobos

[tildearrow]

Typo:

The new AQtion comtrollers are being promoted

[edwaleni]

Early Aquantia users had issues, mostly slow bandwidth or system boot problems post install.

Some issues were traced to PCIe 2.x boards not able to keep up, especially cheaper ones. Many Intel CPU boards with limited PCIe lanes had issues as well as some of the Aquantia OEM cards didn't like it.

These issues aren't as prevalent in PCIe 3.x boards it appears.

Adapter prices have come down significantly as Aquantia reaches economy of scale. Some OEM's are below $100 retail now. Switches are also much cheaper now, NBASE-T switches are in the mid $200 range.

[wizard69]

I suppose this is good news for somebody. I'm just realizing that it has been a long time since I've plugged into an Ethernet connection.

[shmerl]

Why not use SFP+ instead? Routers should start using it really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_form-factor_pluggable_transceiver#SFP+

[Michael]

Why not use SFP+ instead? Routers should start using it really.

So users particularly buildings/businesses already hard-wired can re-use existing cabling, much smoother path for adoption and costs.

[Adarion]

"Kabelsalat ist gesund!" (cable clutter (lit. cable-salad) is healthy!)
I like wired connections. But I wonder what the target group is. Okay, if you have some home network, but for many people around the world these chips won't make surfing and downloading faster since the bottleneck is somewhere else (connection, router, or even the very webserver and tons of ads and JavaScript that slow down browsers). And I doubt professionals in industry will use gaming mainboards for their connections. They probably have entirely different things anyway.

[shmerl]

You can convert SFP+ to regular Ethernet if needed (using a converter). Otherwise it's a better technology. Industrial grade routers prefer it actually.

[nomadewolf]

You can convert SFP+ to regular Ethernet if needed (using a converter). Otherwise it's a better technology. Industrial grade routers prefer it actually.

But isn't it more expensive?

EDIT:
Also, i dont' see laptops adopting SPF until it reaches mini/micro SPF spec...

[Aleksei]

Are there that many ISPs able to provide enough speed for this? I totally get this for server environment, but what's the use for desktop?
I'm still on 100Mb/s on home network, pondered switching to 1gbit, there's just not enough benefit for desktop.