Question Can a 2.5G port support 5GbE?

[Game_lifter95]

Hello IT wizards🧙🏻‍♂️

For context I currently have 1GbE (Gigibit Ethernet) proved by AT&T fiber. After randomly strolling through their website I noticed AT&T now offers up to 5GbE in my area!? So of course I want to upgrade to the max. Now for my question, I am also upgrading my Wi-Fi router to one that supports the new 6E standard and I’m stuck between two routers. One router has “Dual 2.5G ports” on the back and the other router has a single 10G port. If I upgrade my plan to 5GbE will I get the full 5Gs through a 2.5G port? Or do I need to go with the router that has a 10G port?
Also, I remember reading that 1G ports & 10G ports only support their respective through put speeds so does that mean I wouldn’t see my new 5GbE speeds using the 10G port as well? Someone please explain the specs of these ports to me cause it’s driving me crazy can’t find an explanation online and clearly I don’t know anything about Ethernet ports.

 

[Game_lifter95]

That is very strange it seems most the patch cords they sell are awg26 for cat6a. All the bulk cable is awg 23.
Maybe the standard is slightly different for cat6a but so far the documents seem to be behind paywalls. I know cat6a cable many times has shielding which will make the cable thicker so maybe they use the smaller wire to avoid very thick cable. You technically do not have to have the pairs with shields on them to be cat6a.

The things though that makes cat6a work is the 550mhz stuff more than anything else and a lot of the cable you see marked cat6 can run at 550mhz.

I suspect the cable you are looking at will work, I would be much more suspect if you were going the full 100 meters. Note normal cat6 cable will go 50 meters at 10gbit. I am not sure if this was added to the standard when they added 2.5 and 5g recommendations. Everyone knows though it works fine to 50 meters and likely more.....it just has not been a official standard.

This all comes down to what actually works and what meets the standard. This is how all those companies get away with selling that flat cable. It works fine for short distance that most home users are using. If it didn't actually work they would get so many bad reviews they couldn't sell it. Few people have the almost $1000 meters that it takes to certify cables.

So I was just thinking,
On the NetGear Orbi router (the one with the 10g port) I wanted to do a wired back haul. After looking again it only has
1x 10G port
1x 2.5G port
And
3x 1G ports
I will already be filling the 10G port via a cable from my switch&modem. So if I planned to do a wired back haul I would be limited to 2.5G Ethernet which is not ideal since I want to utilize my entire 5GbE. If you read up on this specific router it’s “claim to fame” is that it’s the worlds first quad band router (6Ghz, 2x 5Ghz, 2.4Ghz) utilizing a second 5Ghz band strictly for backhaul between router & satellites. Do you think I’d get more data throughput via the wired backhaul utilizing the 2.5G port? Or using the 5Ghz band? The distance, in my case, from router to satellite is well under 50ft.

 

[Game_lifter95]

So I was just thinking,
On the NetGear Orbi router (the one with the 10g port) I wanted to do a wired back haul. After looking again it only has
1x 10G port
1x 2.5G port
And
3x 1G ports
I will already be filling the 10G port via a cable from my switch&modem. So if I planned to do a wired back haul I would be limited to 2.5G Ethernet which is not ideal since I want to utilize my entire 5GbE. If you read up on this specific router it’s “claim to fame” is that it’s the worlds first quad band router (6Ghz, 2x 5Ghz, 2.4Ghz) utilizing a second 5Ghz band strictly for backhaul between router & satellites. Do you think I’d get more data throughput via the wired backhaul utilizing the 2.5G port? Or using the 5Ghz band? The distance, in my case, from router to satellite is well under 50ft.

After some quick research it looks like the max throughput of a 5Ghz radio band over wifi is 1.3Gbps. So using the 2.5G port for wired back haul would be, in this instance, the best case senecio but that’s still not enough…if there such a thing as Ethernet splitter to divide the single 10G port on the router so I can use that as a backhaul and utilize full speeds?
Also, I wonder if only the main router has the physical 6Ghz radio antenna, and the satellites do not? I’d have to dissemble one to find out I guess haha

 

[bill001g]

The satellite boxes only have 2.5g and 1gbit ports. Even if you had a extra port on the router the remote satellite can't go any faster than 2.5g.

You need to buy some other system that has faster ports for the backhaul.

 

[Game_lifter95]

The satellite boxes only have 2.5g and 1gbit ports. Even if you had a extra port on the router the remote satellite can't go any faster than 2.5g.

You need to buy some other system that has faster ports for the backhaul.

That’s what I figured, does such a system exist? This is the top of the line for consumer mesh Wi-Fi 6e systems?
also, what security system do you recommend running on this router? The one that comes with it is a subscription

 

[bill001g]

Them only putting 2.5g ports is kinda a admission that they do not expect to ever get over that in wifi traffic.

Most users doing this are using the wireless using the new 6ghz as the back haul. Really they should have 2 6g radios rather than 2 5g radios but they don't for some reason.

To get better you would have to build your own. What you are doing is running remote AP you do not need the extra expense of the so called Mesh/repeater function. You could maybe find real AP with 5g or 10g ports that have wifi6eradios. You could also use a router that has 5g or 10g port and run it as a AP rather than a router.

The mesh stuff provide no real value to you when you use ethernet back haul. I guess it might be slightly easier to configure but how hard is it to set the SSID and passwords manually on the remote device. Everything it already a single network and roaming is a function of the client not the network. Mesh is mostly marketing for people who just buy anything they don't understand because it must be good.

I am not sure what security you are talking about. I think wifi6 support WPA3 if that is what you mean. In theory WPA2 can be cracked with quantum computers....like I got one of those in my back pocket . Does not hurt to turn it on but does not really help until you get rid of all the devices that need wpa2. The router will run a mix and if the evil government hacker uses his quantum computer to crack the wpa2 the will get your password for wpa3.

If you mean some of that other garbage like protecting you against attacks that too is all marketing. Just running the NAT function and not having port forwarding set nothing can get into your network. It is all blocked because NAT is stupid and when it can't figure out which internal device to send the data to it just drops it.

Anything that talks about filtering bad sites etc is almost a lie. All traffic is now encrypted pretty much. This means there is no such thing as deep packet inspection. Since HTTPS is designed to prevent governments from seeing what you are doing it will easily stop any router. The only other hole was the router could spy on the DNS requests to try to determine what sites where being access. DNS now has the ability to be encrypted also. This is supported in the most popular browsers and windows has added it as base support in the OS.

Key thing to point out is this feature is attempting to protect against things inside your network talking to bad places on the internet. This means the internal machines are already compromised. The external machines attempting to hack you are being blocked by the NAT.

In any case you can not use this feature even if it did what they say. This requires much more cpu power to look at every packet and you are talking about running massive data rates. The NAT function is already being done in special hardware bypassing the cpu chip. If you configure pretty much anything that needs the cpu to look at traffic you can not use this hardware nat. You will likely cap your connection speed out at 200-300mbps.

For security you want it being done on the end device. Pretty much the virus and firewall software on the end device should be able to see the problems since it is done before the encryption. It can't stop a user from intentionally load something they shouldn't.