alt Hacker News> Up to 2 Gbps downlink
> 2.5 Gbit/s PoE to upstream switch
Can anybody explain to me why these supposedly premier networking devices are lacking so much in bandwidth? I get it that mmWave is really only ever realistically going to hit 2.5G over the air, but is there any reason why they're not willing to provide at least 10G copper, or an actual SFP port? Hell, even Macs support 10G these days. I never understood this. Do they mean 2 Gbps downlink per client, or per device in total? If it's the former, 2.5G wired seems like a major bottleneck to any serious consumption.
If a single client at 2 Gbps is all the promise of 5G amounted to, well, it would be disappointing to say the least.
Replies
This device is PoE. I’d guess peak wattage has a lot to do with it.
This is a modem, it itself is the client of a cell tower/base station. So unless you put it in a faraday cage with the base station next to it, 2G is almost certainly enough.
The better reason to put a 10G transceiver in this would be that some (cheap, honestly garbage) SFP+ transceivers can’t negotiate anything between 1G and 10G. But I’ve only seen that on bargain-bin hardware so I don’t know that they should be designing products around it.
I think you answered your own question - also the places where mmWave is available, there is also often other better internet connection options.
The whole 2.5 G spec is a weird step for ethernet speeds too. It's unfortunate it took off.
Probably because of the PoE. That discards SFP+, and makes difficult PoE over copper, as you'd probably need 802.3bt PoE++ (that probably most of the Unifi devices aren't compatible with), or a very short cable to avoid interference.
10Gb interfaces also tend to run quite hot and be a bit power hungry.
This is a device that needs to be in a location with good 5G reception, so it makes sense to be PoE powered so you can put it near a window or in the location that gets the best reception, and only run a long ethernet cable. And, although I don't like it too much, 2.5G or 5G NBASE-T is the nearest thing that covers 5G speeds.
The 2Gb downlink speed is the 5G downlink, the max for the whole 5G connection, so 2.5Gb ethernet is enough for that.