Talk:List of interface bit rates

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Price per port, per byte

The price per port or per (mega)byte per second is extremely relevant to most readers and helps them sort out which technologies are historical vs. still in use.

Having a "N/A" tag for those technologies that are no longer available in the marketplace would help to identify those that a modern network student can just ignore.

Practical network decisions tend to get driven by metrics like price per port, trade press usually refers to that metric in comparisons, for instance 10 gigabit Ethernet recently fell to under US$200/port on desktop [1].

There should also be some recognition of when switching technology passes some major cost threshold - 40 gigabit Ethernet only exists because it matches the speed of PCI 3.0 and does not require the expensive bus technology (high end HTX, etc.) of 100 gigabit Ethernet. Companies selling this like Mellanox tend to emphasize that they are at a cost/performance plateau with 40GbE [2]

Density, latency/CPU, power draw and a few other considerations also have inhibited the shift from 1GbE to 10GbE [3], but it's primarily price. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.30.183.245 (talk) 15:37, 17 September 2012

Physical layer interface

The actual physical wire or medium for LAN and WAN technologies should be listed. This determines what options one has over a given building's or campus' existing network.

Obviously the only reason anyone would use IEEE 1901/HomePlug is because they need tight integration/coextent with the existing AC power wiring. And where there is copper Ethernet already in place, you would prefer to use devices compatible with that rather than digging it all up and replacing with serial cabling. :-)

Separating fibre interfaces and existing-wire interfaces from random old copper wire technologies is also helpful.

The many powerline networking technologies can arguably have their own section.