2020 Spring Cleaning: HP 100BaseVG AnyLAN Linux Network Driver Finally Getting Dropped

[oiaohm]

thanks for the enlightening info. Didn't know about those details. What I really meant was that people think that CAT5E can only top at 100 mb. Obviously there are all kinds of overheads. Including the disk speeds, TCP overhead. Even on a CAT6 I rarely ever reach 1gbe because of various factors (obviously not the cable itself).
Also TIA guidelines are that CAT5E is only for homes. It's essentially obsolete for enterprise. So I wouldn't even run it in a commercial setting unless it was for analog phones.

For you general voip and POS systems 100 Mbps is good enough. So its not just analog phones you see on CAT5E there are just some things where 1000Gbe is basically no benefit and you can get lucky with Cat5e. Enterprise does at times run into supply issues with CAT6 and CAT 7 if you are need a building wired out today and there is only CAT5E on hand company may choose to run risk that some ports will only be cat 100Mbps.

Please note there is CAT6 and CAT6A. Fun Cat6 by rating is only for 1000 Gbe where Cat6A is for 10Gbe.

2.5Gbs standard is designed to tolerate the interference on Cat5e. So Cat5e is not quite dead and berried yet. Yes a link that fails 1000Gbe on Cat5E can magically work perfectly at full speed when you use the new 2.5Gbs cards. So 2.5Gbs instead of the 1000Gbe.

Tolerance of adaptors/switches to interference is a big factor how fast you can go over Cat5e.

Yes the new 2.5Gbs stuff is a nice curve ball to make this even more confusing if you should spend money on Cat6A or better.

[garegin]

thanks for the enlightening info. Didn't know about those details. What I really meant was that people think that CAT5E can only top at 100 mb. Obviously there are all kinds of overheads. Including the disk speeds, TCP overhead. Even on a CAT6 I rarely ever reach 1gbe because of various factors (obviously not the cable itself).
Also TIA guidelines are that CAT5E is only for homes. It's essentially obsolete for enterprise. So I wouldn't even run it in a commercial setting unless it was for analog phones.

[oiaohm]

This reminds me that many people have a false impression that CAT 5e can’t do 1000gbe. Also most people think that CAT cables are Ethernet cables. I even had a guy tell me that the 568B wiring was invented by Xerox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIA/EIA-568

CAT 5e by specification is only rated to 100Mhz without interference. That is technically too slow for 1000gbe if adaptors had a zero interference tolerance/mitigation. Cat6 is in fact rated to do 1000gbe without interference with its 250 MHz rating. Of course these rating by the standard are min requirements of cable makers to use the CAT classifications.

Basically the people impression that Cat 5e can't do 1000gbe is not 100 percent wrong. Cat5e rating means depending on quality of cable and tolerance of adaptors/switches you may have issues doing 1000gbe. Cat6 you should not have issues doing 1000gbe because if you do the cable is outside rated requirements.

Its not that I don't use Cat5e for 1000gbe but knowing you are above the rated level for interference tolerance I am aware I have to be more careful running it.

Basically if CAT 5e can or cannot carry 1000gbe is multi factors because the cable rating is technically not high enough. I have pushed 1000gbe though CAT 3 under controlled conditions not that I would do a big wiring job and expect that to work at all. Cat5e if you wire out a building and are willing to tolerated a random percentage of ports only being 100 Mbps instead due to cable limitations caused by to low of rating against interference it fine. So there are cases where business say cabling will be all cat6 to have 1000 gbe without these random failures.

You don't really want people thinking that choosing Cat5e is just a cheaper way to get dependable 1000 gbe wiring all the time with the reality its not. Yes the failure rate can be low to less than 1 failure to carry 1000gbe per 1000 ports/links but you can bet you will get sod law and non working link be like to the desk of a person who does in fact need the speed so complains up a storm. You can see the same things happen with cat 6 and cat6a with 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Underrated cable for job does have it price.

[garegin]

This reminds me that many people have a false impression that CAT 5e can’t do 1000gbe. Also most people think that CAT cables are Ethernet cables. I even had a guy tell me that the 568B wiring was invented by Xerox.

[oiaohm]

https://harddiskdirect.com/a3402a-hp...k-adapter.html

HP even made JetDirect cards for it....

Please note what I said. That was a model card I was dealing that you open up box put them in computer and they don't fire up any more after they had sat on shelf for 5-8 years.

They had two sections if degeneration capacitor and crystal. Either one made the card non functional.

Being able to buy something old not opened does not mean it works any more.

[edwaleni]

I would be surprised if you could find a HP 100BaseVG AnyLAN network adapter that still works. I know I was replacing those when they were about 5-8 years old due to capacitor failures even never used one would be failed out box. This could have been a case of maintaining a driver for no functional hardware at this stage and that would explain no one interest in fixing it as well.

https://harddiskdirect.com/a3402a-hp...k-adapter.html

HP even made JetDirect cards for it....

https://www.m4l.com/J2981A-HP-Network-Accessories

Even the hubs...

https://www.priceblaze.com/j2415a.html?ref=gshp

[oiaohm]

I would be surprised if you could find a HP 100BaseVG AnyLAN network adapter that still works. I know I was replacing those when they were about 5-8 years old due to capacitor failures even never used one would be failed out box. This could have been a case of maintaining a driver for no functional hardware at this stage and that would explain no one interest in fixing it as well.

[edwaleni]

Even then there were very large companies who simply moved to 16Mbps token ring and CAT5. I remember all of those silly LSB issues we would have with ethernet Sun equipment on TR networks.

By the time 100Mbps TR came along, those same companies simply replaced their TR blades with Ethernet ones in the chassis.

I think it was Compaq who came out with those EISA based NIC's where all you had to do was swap out a module which replaced the TR PHY with an Ethernet one. The Deskpro's had that module plugin right on the planar.

[NotMine999]

In all of my years working with networking equipment (going back to the 1980s that is), and the broad range of equipment that I encountered, I cannot remember ever coming into contact with a network that used this stuff.

Heck, I remember the days of working on ARCnet and "pre-10Base-T" hardware, but this HP 100BaseVG AnyLAN stuff ... this stuff was truly odd-ball, esoteric, corner case, market niche stuff.

By the time 100Base whatever was starting to hit the marketplace, every business I worked with or simply met with on a business (sales or service) call had already planned and budgeted the costs of upgrading their network cabling infrastructure rather than trying to stretch the current cable just a few years more.

[Vistaus]

*waiting for angry Phoronix members with this kind of ancient hardware*