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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

#111

Post by sgerenser »

izacus wrote: post #66
jeroenhd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My laptop refuses to charge for 45W chargers as well, but I can almost understand it. When plugged into 100W chargers while powered on, it takes ten minutes to gain a single percentage point. Idle in power save may let me charge the thing in a few hours. If I start playing video, the battery slowly drains. If your laptop is part space heater, like most laptops with Nvidia GPUs in them seem to be, using a low power ad…

Which laptop is that? My Razer with 5070 will take 45W chargers just fine, so do the ThinkPads, my work 16" MacBook and previous Asus Zephyrus with 4070.

I was on a trip a few years ago and had only brought my “compact” 45w usb-c charger since the brick that came with my work ThinkPad (one of the high end 16” screen models, maybe p16?) was enormous. When I plugged it in Windows complained that the charger was insufficient to charge the laptop. I think it at least kept it from draining the battery though. I had to run to Walmart and get a 65w charger which did the job fine.

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

#112

Post by theandrewbailey »

ssl-3 wrote: post #63
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.

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…

This quagmire (along with the version names) is why I call it the Unintuitive Serial Bus.

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

#113

Post by ciupicri »

eqvinox wrote: post #11

Too bad this is 10Gbase-T, that energy-wasting hot-running garbage needs to die sooner rather than later. Good thing the ranges for 25Gbase-T are short enough to make it impractical for home use. (Fibre is nowhere near as "sensitive" as some people believe.)

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

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

#114

Post by nottorp »

whilenot-dev wrote: post #60
justinclift wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem to be USB 4?

Is there an SSD that saturates USB3.2 Gen2 speeds and requires USB4?

Maybe not, but the USB consortium hasn't got around to polluting the USB4 namespace yet so it's safer to buy stuff with the USB4 label.

Of course, just give them some time and they'll come up with USB4 "gen classic" at 11 Mbps.

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

#115

Post by ddtaylor »

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?

All I know is that I pick up some cables they work for some things and then I try to use them for other things and they don't work.

Isn't the whole point of the USB standard to make it so you don't have to be a super nerd to plug stuff together? People just want to transfer data from their phone or camera to a laptop without navigating spec sheets.

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

#116

Post by massysett »

zoward wrote: post #76
izacus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.

Now I only buy USB cables if they are marked with their speed and wattage. If it’s not marked, I have to assume it carries little power and is glacially slow, which is fine to charge some Bluetooth headphones but is not usable to connect an SSD.

https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_cable_log...

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

#117

Post by Fnoord »

Galanwe wrote: post #98
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.

10G DACs are no cheaper than cat6, which is perfectly fine for 10G at most practical distances. Considering the target audience of these cards it seems pretty obvious to me that letting users "just buy a cat 6 cable" is miles more reasonable than having them buy a transceiver or DAC. As for allowing to switch to fiber, that just seems orthogonal again to what these USB NICs are for, not to mention the SFP+ itself is…

DACs are very cheap (second hand and AliExpress) and they never use much W. If both machines are near each other though (which a DAC cable implies) and both run Linux and both support Thunderbolt, you might be better off with a direct ethernet over TB connection. Whether macOS supports such, I don't know.

The other side will then also need a low power NIC (of which fiber and DAC over SFP+ are less power hungry). What this article doesn't mention, is that there are also a lot of PCIe NICs on the market which aren't power hungry (RTL8127), as well as RTL8261C for switches/routers.

I've seen low power RTL NICs with SFP+ on it, too (example: [1]). With SFP+, you'll have a lot more versatility. DAC and SFP+ fiber are very cheap, btw. Especially second hand they go for virtually nothing. I have 10 SFP+ fiber lying around here doing nothing which I got for a few EUR each.

For me as European with high energy prices and solar energy gotten the beat next year (in NL), this is all very interesting.

There's a couple of good reasons why to opt for fiber in the home. You keep the energy between the different groups separated which can help. I also find fiber very easy to get through walls, allowing me to have multiple fiber connections through walls (currently I use 1x fiber + 1x ethernet for PoE possibilities from fusebox).

With all above being said, AQC100S is low power and does not get very hot. You can get these with SFP+ and PCIe/TB. They've been available for a while.

[1] https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005011733192115.html (no vouching for, just first hit on search)

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

#118

Post by fmajid »

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.

The SFP+ ones are all Thunderbolt or USB4 this far, i.e. not backward compatible with USB 3.x, like this QNAP one: https://www.qnap.com/en/product/qna-uc10g1sf

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

#120

Post by PaulKeeble »

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.

USB is just a complete mess. I don't mind so much ports having different capabilities if they are well documented in the specification sheets of the hardware because then at least I can find out what they are capable of, but alas it never seems to be the case. Its very hard to work out whether a port can do Displayport and to what extent/performance or its true power capability or just its real data transfer speed. More often than I like I have just hoped that something works. Anything above 5W charging and 5gbps transfer is optional.
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