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New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

jeffgeerling.com

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

#161

Post by donatj »

MisterTea wrote: post #134
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…

10 Gb is cheap! Mikrotik has a 4x10Gb + 1x1Gb port switch for $150 USD and an 8x10Gb version for about $275. I have the 8 port version. SFP+'s and fiber are cheap, like maybe 50 bucks for the SFP+ set and fiber. 10Gb PCIe cards are maybe ~$50 new on Amazon with Intel chips and cheaper on eBay - I bought used 10 Gb Mellanox cards for $25 each - "they just work" under FreeBSD and Linux. Copper 10 Gb used to consume waa…

I redid the backbone of my home in 10Gb fiber, and "cheap" is not the term I would use. Especially when you can get perfectly cromulent 1GbE switches for like $10 these days.

The Mikrotik switches [1] work technically speaking but they are quite difficult to configure. You have to pull them from your network, connect physically to a specific port, force your machine onto a specific IP, connect to a specific IP. I could not get this to work in macOS nor Ubuntu despite hours of futzing with it. They both kept infuriatingly overriding my changes to the IP. I was only able to get this to work on an old Windows 10 laptop.

Once you do get their web UI up, you pray the password on the sticker on the bottom works. Neither of mine did and I had to firmware reset both and find the default password online. The web UI itself holds no hands. It's straight out of 1995, largely unstyled HTML. While using both of my devices the backend the UI talked to would crash and log me out about every five minutes. Not every five minutes after log in. Every 5 minutes wall time!

The Mikrotik switches are also fanless, and 10GbE SFP+ adapters throw off a lot of heat. If you use more than one they overheat. You can just about get away with two if you put them on opposite sides but I would not recommend it.

I've also had very mixed luck with SFP+ module compatibility with this thing. I had a number of modules that refused to run at higher than one GB, hence my fighting to get into the UI. Despite a ton of futzing between logouts I was not able to get them to work at 10Gb and returned them.

I'll be honest, my Mikrotik switches have been infuriating. I replaced one of them with a Ubiquiti Pro XG 8 8-Port 10G and holy crap the difference is night and day. It just works. Everything worked straight from the box day one, I can configure it from my phone or the web, I highly recommend this thing.

The Ubiquiti switches are multiple times more expensive but if you value your time they're well worth the price. I still have two of the Mikrotik switches on my network but am completely intent on replacing them. The Ubiquiti is worth it for online configuration alone. No need to pull the thing from your network, test your changes immediately!

1. https://mikrotik.com/product/crs305_1g_4s_in

2. https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/usw-pro-xg-8-poe

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

#162

Post by Neywiny »

LoganDark wrote: post #148

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 T…

Because USB can do 2 lanes of 10 gbps. So that's 20gbps. 10 The reason it's smaller to go with USB is that AFAIK thunderbolt only bridges to other interfaces like USB or PCIe. So any thunderbolt NIC is actually thunderbolt -> PCIe, then PCIe -> Ethernet. USB is more often interfaced with directly. 2 big power hungry chips vs 1. 1 Thunderbolt also carries overhead vs oculink. Thunderbolt tunnels PCIe. The PCIe tunnels the ethernet traffic. Oculink is just PCIe, which is why it's not as hot pluggable but gets significant performance increases for PCIe devices. USB in this case tunnels Ethernet traffic. So thunderbolt NICs have 2 layers, USB has 1. 1 PCIe -> Ethernet.

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

#163

Post by mbreese »

adrian_b wrote: post #147
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/…

The fact that you had to list all of the versions and speeds at the top of your post is illustrative of what the parent was trying to say. We can all look up what speed is associated with what version, but it’s not exactly a consumer friendly experience.

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

#164

Post by markonen »

ciupicri wrote: post #142
markonen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-)

LC connectors are smaller and what the actual SFP+ modules typically have. If you want to run a link with just one fiber, you need BiDi optics.

FS does custom multi-fiber cable assemblies too (beyond the duplex patches which is basically the standard), and they can also include pull eyes on them if that’d be helpful.

Single mode is a good choice, common wisdom used to be multimode for short runs but the single mode stuff is not much more expensive and the standard 10km optics will likely brute force the signal over any mistakes like cable kinks or dirt on the connectors.

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

#165

Post by OneOffAsk »

buserror wrote: post #150
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…

Zero shielding may actually help. Shielding acts as an antenna when not properly grounded and continuous, which is more common than not.

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

#166

Post by lucb1e »

topspin wrote: post #5
GeertJohan wrote: post #3

A Framework expansion card was also announced this week. https://frame.work/nl/en/products/wisdpi-10g-ethernet-expans...

That link notes: "Card supports 10Gbit/s and 10/100/1000/2500/5000/10000Mbit/s Ethernet" Nice to see; some NICs are shedding 10/100 support. Apparently, it's not necessary to do this, even in a low cost device.

Low cost? The link mentions no price, only a "notify me" button as far as I can see. Does it show a(n estimated) price point for you somewhere?

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

#167

Post by mbreese »

wongarsu wrote: post #137
ssl-3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, it's fine. The lack of clarity is in keeping with the USB C connector itself, which may supply or accept power at various rates or not at all, may be fast or slow, may provide or accept video or not, and may even provide an interpretation of PCI Express but probably doesn't. It probably looks the same no matter what, and the cable selected to use probably also won't be very forthcoming with its capabilities eithe…

The USB A connector stayed the same between USB 1, 2 and 3. Yet most manufacturers voluntary distinguished them by giving USB 1 and 1.1 a white insert in plug and port, USB 2 a black insert and USB 3 a blue one This was neither standarized nor enforced, yet it worked remarkably well in the real world Then we decided to just have no markings at all on USB C cables. On the ports at least we occasionally get little thun…

The exterior of the USB A connector stayed the same. The number of pins increased when we went from USB 2 to 3. So, even in this case, it’s slightly more complicated. The colors helped because the capabilities were very different between the ports. But when the USB IF increased the number of options (and reduced the size of the connector), different colors became impossible to do.

The problem is that there are too many uses for one connector. But this is wha we wanted - a reduced number of standardized connector/power options.

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

#168

Post by BearOso »

Someone1234 wrote: post #151
TomatoCo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Great site, thanks for the link. But holy heck, that "Also Known As" column is complete chaos. What the heck is wrong with the USB Consortium, do they have brain damage? Also, according to that table, "USB4 Gen 2×2" is a downgrade on "USB 3.2 Gen 2x2", since the cable length is 0.8m instead of 1m for the same speeds. Which is uhh unexpected.

The cable length is only for the spec. You can get longer cables that achieve the higher bandwidth, they're just not certified for that.

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

#169

Post by gsich »

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?

3 pairs probably. But then again you only need 2.

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

#170

Post by barnabask »

movedx wrote: post #160

The inaccessibility of 10GbE, and the even higher inaccessibility of anything faster, made me move away from NAS devices to DAS. Not everyone can do this, or needs move TBs of data on a frequent basis, but if you do then a USB4/Thunderbolt 5 DAS is the way to go (and it’s basically the only way to go in film and TV data management.)

TIL that DAS stands for "Direct Attached Storage." In the olden times we called them external hard drives.
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