# Do I need gigabit ethernet for Mini?



## triglyph (Jan 30, 2010)

I have the Roamio in the house and the Mini in my separate office. Do I need to run gigabit ethernet for best results? Do I need Cat6 cable to do this?


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

The Mini hardware isn't even capable of gigabit ethernet. It is only 10/100 ethernet. Cat5e should work fine, but if you have to run the ethernet anyways, Cat6 wouldn't hurt though.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

If you never plan on going faster than gigabit, then Cat5e will be fine. I've been running Gigabit over Cat5e at home since 2001. Although at this point GigE is the bottle neck between my PCs since they all have SSDs in them. So if I had something faster than GigE. With transfers between my PCs I could take advantage of the several times GigE speeds(4Gb/s+ speeds) that the SSDs give me.


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## JayBird (Jan 26, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> If you never plan on going faster than gigabit, then Cat5e will be fine. I've been running Gigabit over Cat5e at home since 2001. Although at this point GigE is the bottle neck between my PCs since they all have SSDs in them. So if I had something faster than GigE. With transfers between my PCs I could take advantage of the several times GigE speeds(4Gb/s+ speeds) that the SSDs give me.


In the grand scheme of things, the cost of cable is insignificant if you're running the cables through the walls. As part of greater media wall installation project, we are having our whole house wired with Belden 10GX Cat6A. The incremental cost to go with premium Cat6A is dwarfed by the thought of ever having to tear open the walls again to re-run cable, and future proofs me for if/when 10Gb Ethernet becomes mainstream in the home. It's not as far off as you might think... It really wasn't that long ago that people thought Gigabit Ethernet was overkill in the home, and now it's pretty much mainstream. And I only want to have to run the cabling once.

The nice thing is that the Cat6A cable is back compatible to earlier standards, so although I won't be hooking up any 10Gb devices any time soon, it works fine with slower 10/100 Mb or 1 Gb devices today, and will be there if/when I need it 5-10 years from now when I want to start upgrading everything to 10 Gb.

Just food for thought...


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

You were just too cheap to spring for the Cat7A cable huh? You'll be kicking yourself when 40Gb is all the rage and you're stuck poking along at 10Gb.


JayBird said:


> As part of greater media wall installation project, we are having our whole house wired with Belden 10GX Cat6A.


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## Time_Lord (Jun 4, 2012)

JayBird said:


> It really wasn't that long ago that people thought Gigabit Ethernet was overkill in the home, and now it's pretty much mainstream. And I only want to have to run the cabling once.


I dunno I'm still running 100Mb/s at home and it hasn't become an issue, most of the traffic on my network is simply internet browsing and considering that my link is below 100Mb/s its not an issue. Sure eventually my internet link will be greater that 100Mb/s so at that point I'll upgrade my switch.

oh I wired my house for ethernet about 16yrs ago so I have a mix of Cat5 and Cat5e cabling since that's what was available and all my drops were tested to meet Cat5e specs, even the Cat5 specs (neighbor's daughter worked for Fluke and brought home a fancy network tester) probably because I'm not in a noisy environment and the cable runs were not near the maximum permitted run length.

So I fully expect to be able to run 1Gb/s ethernet when the time comes, plus everything I ran is solid copper as opposed to the copper clad aluminum garbage.

-TL


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

As long as it passed the cat5e specs then gigabit will be no issue. Once the Cat5e specs were proposed, manufacturers started making cat5 cable with Cat5e specs. But it was just labeled Cat5.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

FYI there is absolutely no need for the Mini to go faster then 10/100. The Mini can only stream on show at a time and the absolute maximum bitrate TiVo supports is 25Mbps. So a 100Mbps connection is all it will ever need to function. Gigabit is a waste.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> FYI there is absolutely no need for the Mini to go faster then 10/100. The Mini can only stream on show at a time and the absolute maximum bitrate TiVo supports is 25Mbps. So a 100Mbps connection is all it will ever need to function. Gigabit is a waste.


Is it really only 25Mb/s? I've played some MP4 videos that had bitrates of 35Mb/s. The mini and Romaios played them without issue.

EDIT: I just tried some MKV Jellyfish test videos. The 55Mb/s and 60 Mb/s test videos played back fine on the Mini and ROamio Pro. The 90Mb/s video was stuttering. I need to find my other ones to see when it starts to have issues with the bitrate.

Or are these videos being transcoded with pyTiVo when they are transferred to the TiVo? If so does it change the bitrate?

EDIT: I forgot the bitrate doesn't peak until near the end of the video when it shows many dozens of jellyfish on screen. The 55Mb/s bitrate video was fine all the way through. The 60Mb/s video had stuttering near the end. And the 90Mb/s video stuttered the entire time.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

The 25Mbps limit was what the Premiere had, so I assumed the Roamio had a similar limit. But even so the real world throughput of 10/100 is about 90Mbps so you'd still be fine. Plus there are no cable or OTA channels in existence that exceed 20Mbps, so you'd never go over that except for transferred videos.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

Dan203 said:


> The 25Mbps limit was what the Premiere had, so I assumed the Roamio had a similar limit. But even so the real world throughput of 10/100 is about 90Mbps so you'd still be fine. Plus there are no cable or OTA channels in existence that exceed 20Mbps, so you'd never go over that except for transferred videos.


Most of what I've read, and confirmed, is you take Mb, divide it by 8, to get MB, then knock 20% off for overhead, leaving you with real-world numbers. You can skip the /8 if you want to stick to Mb.

I suppose some protocols with lower overhead might be in use by now, but most are still "8/10b encoding".

Where it get's fun is when data has to traverse multiple interfaces/protocols, with each one being 8/10b, knocking off another 20% at each step that changes the interface/protocol, along the way.


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## Zu Nim (Apr 20, 2012)

nooneuknow said:


> Most of what I've read, and confirmed, is you take Mb, divide it by 8, to get MB, then knock 20% off for overhead, leaving you with real-world numbers. You can skip the /8 if you want to stick to Mb.
> 
> I suppose some protocols with lower overhead might be in use by now, but most are still "8/10b encoding".
> 
> Where it get's fun is when data has to traverse multiple interfaces/protocols, with each one being 8/10b, knocking off another 20% at each step that changes the interface/protocol, along the way.


FYI, you're confusing signaling rate with data rate. Gigabit Ethernet's signaling rate is 1250Mbaud encoded as 8b/10b resulting in 1000Mbps of potential data. There is overhead in Ethernet, IP, TCP, etc. as well but it's unrelated to 8b/10b and varies based on the traffic.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

20% is excessive. I've never seen 20% overhead on my network. I will get 950Mb/s throughput PC to PC on my GigE network. I'll see over 90Mb/s throughput with transfers from my Roamio Basic on 100BT.

Man this update is taking forever to download. I'm doing all six TiVos and they have been downloading for a long time. At least the Minis are usually quicker than the Roamios in applying the updates.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

Zu Nim said:


> FYI, you're confusing signaling rate with data rate. Gigabit Ethernet's signaling rate is 1250Mbaud encoded as 8b/10b resulting in 1000Mbps of potential data. There is overhead in Ethernet, IP, TCP, etc. as well but it's unrelated to 8b/10b and varies based on the traffic.


I disagree. I'm not confused. But, there's no short way to say what is spread over at least six different Wikipedia articles, so gross over simplification is likely to confuse those reading the simplified version, or make the experts start saying how it's not that simple, often both.

The worst offenders of creating confusion are the manufacturers that state signaling rate as the speed at which something operates, making the consumer think that is the actual throughput, without actually lying.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

aaronwt said:


> 20% is excessive. I've never seen 20% overhead on my network. I will get 950Mb/s throughput PC to PC on my GigE network. I'll see over 90Mb/s throughput with transfers from my Roamio Basic on 100BT.
> 
> Man this update is taking forever to download. I'm doing all six TiVos and they have been downloading for a long time. At least the Minis are usually quicker than the Roamios in applying the updates.


Yes, aaronwt, you win the award for the network that everybody on TCF knows the speed of, and will never forget, as you post it every chance you get, for every interface. IIRC, the one thing I never see posted is how you come up with your numbers. You just state them. For months I have just kept walking, rather than question how much of that is actually the data, only, from point A to point B, with everything it takes to get it from A to B removed (anything but the raw data is overhead). I'm not big on blind faith in numbers, especially at face value.

20% overhead to factor in everything that's not the actual data to be transported is very real-world. But "overhead" comes in many flavors, and many layers of it can be involved, even on just one interface. If all you are measuring is the flow through the pipe, then your numbers make sense.

My updates downloaded and processed at fast pace. Others also reported on how quick it was for them. The only thing that took 30+ minutes was my first forced post-update service connection, on the "Loading" stage (the connection/download was quick).


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## ncted (May 13, 2007)

tarheelblue32 said:


> You were just too cheap to spring for the Cat7A cable huh? You'll be kicking yourself when 40Gb is all the rage and you're stuck poking along at 10Gb.


They're going to have to come up with new solutions to the crosstalk issues with 10GigBaseT before 40GB over twisted pair is an option, not to mention the power requirements. I am in the middle of upgrading to 10Gb in my company's datacenter networks, and it was an easy decision to stick with fiber for interconnects rather than copper. Price, performance, and reliability will favor fiber for a long time at the high end.


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## Time_Lord (Jun 4, 2012)

ncted said:


> They're going to have to come up with new solutions to the crosstalk issues with 10GigBaseT before 40GB over twisted pair is an option,


I think we should just go back to 10Base5, I loved those vampire taps in the ceiling!


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

nooneuknow said:


> Yes, aaronwt, you win the award for the network that everybody on TCF knows the speed of, and will never forget, as you post it every chance you get, for every interface. IIRC, the one thing I never see posted is how you come up with your numbers. You just state them. For months I have just kept walking, rather than question how much of that is actually the data, only, from point A to point B, with everything it takes to get it from A to B removed (anything but the raw data is overhead). I'm not big on blind faith in numbers, especially at face value.
> 
> 20% overhead to factor in everything that's not the actual data to be transported is very real-world. But "overhead" comes in many flavors, and many layers of it can be involved, even on just one interface. If all you are measuring is the flow through the pipe, then your numbers make sense.
> 
> My updates downloaded and processed at fast pace. Others also reported on how quick it was for them. The only thing that took 30+ minutes was my first forced post-update service connection, on the "Loading" stage (the connection/download was quick).


The Roamio Baisc reports average transfer rates in the low 90's. Which also correspond to what my PC reports. For my PC to PC transfers I use a bandwidth monitor program to see what my speeds are from the different interfaces that are being used on the PCs.

All my TiVos took a very long time to download the update for some reason. The Premiere though took forever. It was downloading for well over an hour. I never did check it this morning to see if it actually finished and installed the update last night.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

nooneuknow said:


> Most of what I've read, and confirmed, is you take Mb, divide it by 8, to get MB, then knock 20% off for overhead, leaving you with real-world numbers. You can skip the /8 if you want to stick to Mb.
> 
> I suppose some protocols with lower overhead might be in use by now, but most are still "8/10b encoding".
> 
> Where it get's fun is when data has to traverse multiple interfaces/protocols, with each one being 8/10b, knocking off another 20% at each step that changes the interface/protocol, along the way.


Video is also rated in Mbps, so no need to do the /8 when comparing video bitrates to network speeds. The ATSC standard caps the data rate at 19.2Mbps. A single QAM on cable can only handle 38Mbps. So there is no possible way you'd ever have a program stored on your TiVo that would exceed the ~90Mbps you can get from 10/100 Ethernet.

Having a gigabit network for your home is important, especially if you plan to use multiple Minis. I was simply saying there is no need for the port on the Mini itself to be gigabit.


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## Zu Nim (Apr 20, 2012)

nooneuknow said:


> I disagree. I'm not confused. But, there's no short way to say what is spread over at least six different Wikipedia articles, so gross over simplification is likely to confuse those reading the simplified version, or make the experts start saying how it's not that simple, often both.
> 
> The worst offenders of creating confusion are the manufacturers that state signaling rate as the speed at which something operates, making the consumer think that is the actual throughput, without actually lying.


You introduced 8b/10b encoding into a discussion about Gigabit Ethernet data rates. Your post was about 20% overhead and that there might be "some protocols with lower overhead", making it sound as if 8b/10b is responsible for that overhead. That is incorrect. The signaling rate is different from the data rate. It doesn't require six Wikipedia articles to explain, it's very simple. 1000Mbps is not the signaling rate, it's the data rate. You don't end up with a usable 800Mbps because of 8b/10b. You end up with a usable 1000Mbps from 1250Mbaud. Also, advertised wired Ethernet speeds are always the data rate, not the signaling rate.


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## bfollowell (Aug 24, 2013)

Why does the Tivo Mini Start Here booklet suggest that connecting by MoCA network is the recommended option? If you had ethernet available, wouldn't that the better, more preferred method of connecting to your main Tivo unit?

- Byron


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

Zu Nim said:


> You introduced 8b/10b encoding into a discussion about Gigabit Ethernet data rates. Your post was about 20% overhead and that there might be "some protocols with lower overhead", making it sound as if 8b/10b is responsible for that overhead. That is incorrect. The signaling rate is different from the data rate. It doesn't require six Wikipedia articles to explain, it's very simple. 1000Mbps is not the signaling rate, it's the data rate. You don't end up with a usable 800Mbps because of 8b/10b. You end up with a usable 1000Mbps from 1250Mbaud. Also, advertised wired Ethernet speeds are always the data rate, not the signaling rate.


So, if I had left "8/10b encoding" out of my post, you would not have objected? I was searching my mind to help explain, and back-up, what I meant about overhead. I grabbed the wrong explainer. My bad.

I only put it in, since I was speaking of the big picture, and including more interfaces, than just what goes on between an ethernet switch to another ethernet switch.

Example: USB, just to name one place where 8/10b can apply. USB to ethernet adapters exist. I have a USB 2.0 one I use for my laptop, since it only came with 10/100 ethernet, and USB 2.0 ports. I also have a USB 3.0 expresscard adapter, that allows me to use a USB 3.0 Gigabit adapter, at closer to gigabit speed. If my PCIe was of a lower revision, I'd still be able to get gigabit speed, but not full 5Gb out of the USB 3.0 port, much like how my tower PCs are PCIe v1.x, and I only get half of USB 3.0 speed, using PCIe USB 3.0 add-in cards. Even this is over-simplifying, as I'm leaving overhead out of "speed", in most of what I just rattled-off.

I'm done with this. Even though it may appear I intended offense towards aaronwt, I didn't. I'm just going to let this go, and forget trying to explain where I was coming from, and what I was trying to say.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

bfollowell said:


> Why does the Tivo Mini Start Here booklet suggest that connecting by MoCA network is the recommended option? If you had ethernet available, wouldn't that the better, more preferred method of connecting to your main Tivo unit?
> 
> - Byron


They assume everyone already has coax at the TV, whereas most don't have Ethernet.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

Zu Nim said:


> You introduced 8b/10b encoding into a discussion about Gigabit Ethernet data rates. Your post was about 20% overhead and that there might be "some protocols with lower overhead", making it sound as if 8b/10b is responsible for that overhead. That is incorrect. The signaling rate is different from the data rate. It doesn't require six Wikipedia articles to explain, it's very simple. 1000Mbps is not the signaling rate, it's the data rate. You don't end up with a usable 800Mbps because of 8b/10b. You end up with a usable 1000Mbps from 1250Mbaud. Also, advertised wired Ethernet speeds are always the data rate, not the signaling rate.





nooneuknow said:


> So, if I had left "8/10b encoding" out of my post, you would not have objected? I was searching my mind to help explain, and back-up, what I meant about overhead. I grabbed the wrong explainer. My bad. I only put it in, since I was speaking of the big picture, and including more interfaces, than just what goes on between an ethernet switch to another ethernet switch. Example: USB, just to name one place where 8/10b can apply. USB to ethernet adapters exist. I have a USB 2.0 one I use for my laptop, since it only came with 10/100 ethernet, and USB 2.0 ports. I also have a USB 3.0 expresscard adapter, that allows me to use a USB 3.0 Gigabit adapter, at closer to gigabit speed. If my PCIe was of a lower revision, I'd still be able to get gigabit speed, but not full 5Gb out of the USB 3.0 port, much like how my tower PCs are PCIe v1.x, and I only get half of USB 3.0 speed, using PCIe USB 3.0 add-in cards. Even this is over-simplifying, as I'm leaving overhead out of "speed", in most of what I just rattled-off. I'm done with this. Even though it may appear I intended offense towards aaronwt, I didn't. I'm just going to let this go, and forget trying to explain where I was coming from, and what I was trying to say.


Oh boy, this is going to be like Godzilla vs Mothra, Alien vs Predator, Superman vs Batman........I can't wait!!!  :up:


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

nooneuknow said:


> ................
> 
> I'm done with this. Even though it may appear I intended offense towards aaronwt, I didn't. ..................


I didn't take it that way.


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## Zu Nim (Apr 20, 2012)

nooneuknow said:


> So, if I had left "8/10b encoding" out of my post, you would not have objected? I was searching my mind to help explain, and back-up, what I meant about overhead. I grabbed the wrong explainer. My bad.


I wouldn't have. Without it, you were offering your personal experience: Lop 20% from the advertised speed to find an achievable real-world utilization. When you alluded to 8b/10b as a basis, it seemed easy to correct the misinformation. No more, no less. Happy motoring! :up:


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## ac3243 (Sep 15, 2014)

So the long and short of it is that if you want to never have to rewire, use fiber. It has more chance to be usable with new speeds than any current copper.


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## Time_Lord (Jun 4, 2012)

ac3243 said:


> So the long and short of it is that if you want to never have to rewire, use fiber. It has more chance to be usable with new speeds than any current copper.


ok, so which type of fiber?

Single mode fiber with a core diameter of 9 microns or Multi-mode (which is what you'd most likely use) but which diameter 50 micron or 62.5 micron?

most likely you'd want mult-mode, the termination electronics are a lot cheaper but which diameter?


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

bfollowell said:


> Why does the Tivo Mini Start Here booklet suggest that connecting by MoCA network is the recommended option? If you had ethernet available, wouldn't that the better, more preferred method of connecting to your main Tivo unit?
> 
> - Byron


Actually, the install book I read prefers the Ethernet and is stated as the easiest and first option. TiVo recommends MoCA preferred to WiFi because WFi I s not supported.


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