New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper • Hacker News Board

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#141

Post by TomatoCo » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 12:54 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #53

All these USB version names. I used to know what they all meant, but then the USB IF went ahead and renamed them all and made a bunch of versions have the same name and renamed some versions to have the same name as the old name of other versions. I have absolutely no idea what anyone means when they say USB 3.2 gen 2x2. I used to know what USB 3.2 meant but it's certainly not that.

Going by Fabien Sanglard's cheat sheet (who I trust uncritically) https://fabiensanglard.net/usbcheat/index.html it looks like 3.2 actually is a broader term than expected. Maybe there was some awful attempt at backwards compatibility? Or forwards?

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#142

Post by ciupicri » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 12:56 PM UTC

markonen wrote: post #128

ciupicri wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How easy can an ordinary home user install fiber in his home compared to a good old wire?

There’s nothing hard about it if you can run pre-terminated patches. Which you typically can since the connectors are so small.

So you're saying users could buy stuff like this? "25m (82ft) Fiber Patch Cable, 1 Fiber, SC APC Simplex to SC APC Simplex, Single Mode (OS2), Riser (OFNR), 2.0mm, Tight-Buffered, Yellow", https://www.fs.com/eu-en/products/282133.html?attribute=1031...

Heck, I don't even know what I should buy for 10G SFP+ ports and a distance of say 30 meters. Guess, I'm back to CAT6 :-)

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#143

Post by bluGill » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 12:56 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #79

Tade0 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 mode saved me once when I really really really needed to have a connection in that moment, but the ethernet cable glued to the wall that I was using had only three out of eight wires even functioning.

Don’t we need at least four for 100 Mbps?

There is two wire ethernet that supports 100. It isn't common, but automotive is starting to use it.

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#144

Post by renticulous » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #53

All these USB version names. I used to know what they all meant, but then the USB IF went ahead and renamed them all and made a bunch of versions have the same name and renamed some versions to have the same name as the old name of other versions. I have absolutely no idea what anyone means when they say USB 3.2 gen 2x2. I used to know what USB 3.2 meant but it's certainly not that.

I predict in future when our civilization will advance to higher level, this phenomenon will happen with english words and jargons. e.g. here are versioned and namespaced words. topology.bio.23, topology.math.45 etc.

Welcome to the brave new world we will enter in far future.

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#145

Post by kalleboo » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 12:58 PM UTC

simonjgreen wrote: post #85

From the source of the RealTek 8129/8139 PCI NIC driver in FreeBSD: (old, not directly relevant, just amusing) https://elixir.bootlin.com/freebsd/v10.2/source/sys/pci/if_r... /* * RealTek 8129/8139 PCI NIC driver * * Supports several extremely cheap PCI 10/100 adapters based on * the RealTek chipset. Datasheets can be obtained from * www.realtek.com.tw. * * Written by Bill Paul * Electrical Engineering Department * C…

> unless you happen to have a 400Mhz PII or some equally overmuscled CPU to drive it

Oh no!

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#146

Post by randusername » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 1:04 PM UTC

nasretdinov wrote: post #121

10 GbE sits in a really weird spot for me, maybe I'm just not understanding something though. It's at most 1.25 GB/sec of bandwidth, yet it's relatively quite expensive. It's not sufficient bandwidth for getting good performance out of most SSDs, yet it's really excessive for any hard drives (except for RAID10 setups I guess). For SSDs you want thunderbolt (or 40+ GbE) connection for best latency and performance, and…

I chose 10GbE to fit 20 HDDs in RAID 10.

~ 1 GB/sec seems about right for a long time. I can't imagine the basic files I work with everyday getting much more storage-dense than they are in 2026.

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#147

Post by adrian_b » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 1:05 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #53

All these USB version names. I used to know what they all meant, but then the USB IF went ahead and renamed them all and made a bunch of versions have the same name and renamed some versions to have the same name as the old name of other versions. I have absolutely no idea what anyone means when they say USB 3.2 gen 2x2. I used to know what USB 3.2 meant but it's certainly not that.

Unfortunately "USB 3.2" is just a version of the standard, which does not give any information about the performance of a USB port or device.

USB 5 Gb/s = USB 3.2 gen 1, available on Type A or Type C connectors (or on devices on a special extended micro B connector)

USB 10 Gb/s = USB 3.2 gen 2, available on Type A or Type C connectors

USB 20 Gb/s = USB 3.2 gen 2x2, available only on Type C connectors

Moreover, "5 Gb/s" is a marketing lie. The so-called USB of 5 Gb/s has a speed of 4 Gb/s (the same as PCIe 2.0). On the other hand, 10 Gb/s and 20 Gb/s, have the claimed speeds, so USB of 10 Gb/s is 2.5 times faster than USB of 5 Gb/s, not 2 times faster.

10 Gb/s USB and Ethernet have truly the same speed, but the USB overhead is somewhat higher, leading to a somewhat lower speed. However, the speed shown in TFA, not much higher than 7 Gb/s seems too low, and it may be caused by the Windows drivers. It is possible that on other operating systems, e.g. Linux, one can get a higher transfer speed.

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#148

Post by LoganDark » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 1:06 PM UTC

I don't understand how a 10GbE adapter is possible without Thunderbolt, or why not being Thunderbolt makes it smaller. In my experience USB speeds faster than 3 don't happen in practice unless you have a Thunderbolt port and device. Maybe I just don't have devices that use the faster USB speeds, but Thunderbolt has always been the one and only way to exceed the speed of USB for me.

I think USB 4 exists based on the Thunderbolt spec (or the other way around?), but doesn't require any Thunderbolt capabilities and therefore isn't very telling.

I think Apple's approach of supporting Thunderbolt 4/5 on every USB port of the MacBook Pro is the only sustainable way forward.

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#149

Post by Forgeties79 » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #91

zoward wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means that if I pick up a random USB cable and plug it into a USB port I have no idea how well it will work or even if it will work at all. It's like the U in USB stands for Unpredictable.

You'll notice a difference between USB 3.1 and 3.2 2x2?

I use cables that look exactly the same to hook up sound boards, SSD’s, HDD’s, remote KVM switchers, phones, computers, tablets, peripherals of every shape, size, and demand. One livestream station (we have multiple) has literally 10-15 of these cables hooked up and the demands vary across devices. It is incredibly important that I know what I am using and what it is hooked up to. I can’t have random things flashing off and on or under-powered when I’m running live streams at work. I can’t be constantly swapping cables because data transfers are suddenly 1/10th what I expected.

This is not some minor inconvenience. It is a serious problem that creates completely avoidable hurdles. We have to label everything so meticulously and anytime somebody asks to borrow/use any usb-c cables from my department, we have to be incredibly particular about what we hand off.

HDMI? Whatever grab it from the drawer. USB-C? I need to assemble a committee and find out your use case, as well as when we’ll get it back. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

The only consistent solution is to massively over spec and spend 10x on cables you don’t need.

Re: New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

#150

Post by buserror » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC

realxrobau wrote: post #88

Are there any that actually have a SFP+ port? That's all I want. No one wants to use 10g ethernet when DACs are cheaper than cat7, and you can just change it up to a $7 multimode when you need longer runs.

Modern transceivers can do 10G on absolutely garbage twisted pair. My house was wired with absolutely dire cat5 cabling. Zero shielding and barely any copper in the pairs. I thought I'd barely be able to do 1G on them, but modern transceivers (amazon) easily do 10G over like 30M of that sort of cables.

In fact I had more trouble getting quality fiber working for that sort of distance than El Cheapo cat5. They do heat up a bit, but they work wonder.