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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

#201

Post by ac29 »

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…

Thunderbolt 4 and 5 are just USB (40, 80 Gbps) with mandatory support for otherwise optional USB-C features like video and high power.

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

#202

Post by teleforce »

eqvinox wrote: post #59
spockz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the energy consumption inherent to 10Gbase-T? Or is it that 1Gbit nics have been around forever and optimised ad infinitum? To be fair, the power consumption is also my biggest gripe with my WiFi 6 AP, they run extremely hot.

It's inherently worse than anything fibre, or even DAC cables (which are kinda cheating.) It needs a shitton of analog "magic" to work with the bandwidth limitations of copper cabling.

Just wondering why you considered DAC cables cheating, is the analog magic mainly the impedance matching or I'm missing something?

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

#203

Post by eqvinox »

bri3d wrote: post #200

I'm disappointed that both the article and comments don't go into the actual differences between how these adapters work and the overhead incurred by USB. At a high level, I'm pretty sure Thunderbolt will be significantly better in all situations: Thunderbolt is PCIe; depending on the way the network card driver works, the PCIe controller will usually end up doing DMA straight into the buffers the SKB points to, and…

ACK. From some cursory experimentation, my laptop can roughly saturate 1G via USB, but on 2.5G things get wonky above roughly 1.9G unidirectional or 2.9G bidirectional.

> Thunderbolt is PCIe

Nit: Thunderbolt isn't PCIe, it tunnels PCIe. Depending on chips used, there's bandwidth limits; I vaguely remember 22.5G on older 40G TB Intel chips.

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

#204

Post by drcongo »

reaperducer wrote: post #186
PaulKeeble wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. M…

USB is just a complete mess. You have to go out of your way to make Apple's Lightning connector look sensible, but somehow the USB consortium has managed to do it.

I miss lightning. Cleanable with a toothpick and some compressed air. The USB-C port on my current iPhone is now compacted with pocket lint and I can't seem to clean it out.

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

#205

Post by ziml77 »

riobard wrote: post #199
adrian_b wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few computer manufacturers do the right thing and they mark the speed on the USB ports, removing ambiguities, for example ASUS does this on my NUCs and motherboards. Unfortunately, there are too many who do not do this, even among the biggest computer vendors.

> mark the speed on the USB ports, removing ambiguities Unfortunately it's not true. Quiz: what happens when a device capable of 20Gbps is plugged into a port marked as 40Gbps?

I can't tell if this is a trick question that has something to do with a quirk of USB running multiple lanes in parallel to get higher speeds.

Because if not then it's the same as any specification for connecting devices that allows for multiple speeds. It runs at the lowest of the max speeds supported of everything in the chain.

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

#206

Post by Aurornis »

bri3d wrote: post #200

I'm disappointed that both the article and comments don't go into the actual differences between how these adapters work and the overhead incurred by USB. At a high level, I'm pretty sure Thunderbolt will be significantly better in all situations: Thunderbolt is PCIe; depending on the way the network card driver works, the PCIe controller will usually end up doing DMA straight into the buffers the SKB points to, and…

> Thunderbolt is PCIe

Thunderbolt allows PCIe tunneling, but it has some overhead over raw PCIe. That's why Thunderbolt eGPU setups don't perform as well as plugging the GPU directly into a PCIe slot.

> USB is USB

Until you get to USB4, when USB 4 supports Thunderbolt 4.

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

#207

Post by eqvinox »

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/…

> Moreover, "5 Gb/s" is a marketing lie.

It's not a lie, the b just stands for baud not bit ;-)

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

#208

Post by Someone1234 »

BearOso wrote: post #168
Someone1234 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, so per spec it is a downgrade.

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

#209

Post by hypercube33 »

mbreese wrote: post #163
adrian_b wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thats just port speed, charging and other features are all a crapshoot on USB making Thunderbolt the sane version of the "USB-C" family where it requires a set of things (speed, charging wattage)

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

#210

Post by bri3d »

Aurornis wrote: post #206
bri3d wrote: post #200

I'm disappointed that both the article and comments don't go into the actual differences between how these adapters work and the overhead incurred by USB. At a high level, I'm pretty sure Thunderbolt will be significantly better in all situations: Thunderbolt is PCIe; depending on the way the network card driver works, the PCIe controller will usually end up doing DMA straight into the buffers the SKB points to, and…

> Thunderbolt is PCIe Thunderbolt allows PCIe tunneling, but it has some overhead over raw PCIe. That's why Thunderbolt eGPU setups don't perform as well as plugging the GPU directly into a PCIe slot. > USB is USB Until you get to USB4, when USB 4 supports Thunderbolt 4.

Fair; I should have said "from the standpoint of the driver."

> USB 4 supports Thunderbolt 4

It's the opposite! I hate to get into it as I saw the USB naming argument pretty thoroughly enumerated in the comments here already, but the pedantic interpretation is "Thunderbolt 4 is a superset of USB4 which requires implementation of the USB4 PCIe tunneling protocol which is an evolution of the Thunderbolt 3 PCIe tunneling protocol."

From the standpoint of USB-IF a "USB4" host doesn't need to support PCIe tunneling, but Microsoft also (wisely, IMO) put a wrench into this classic USB confusion nightmare by requiring "USB4" ports to support PCIe tunneling for Windows Logo.

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