Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

jeffgeerling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 384 posts

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

#321

Post by simoncion »

zrm wrote: post #257
simoncion wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been able to get Intel X520 NICs [0], with transceivers included for ~40USD on Newegg for a long time. This is a little more than double the price of Newegg's cheapest single-port 10/100/1000 copper card, but even the cheapest available such card is three times your "chicken and egg"-solving price point. I suspect the combination of the absence of cheap-o all-in-one AP/router combo boxes with any SFP+ cages an…

You can get copper ones for $5.99 (quality may vary): https://www.amazon.com/1000Mbps-Network-Performance-Gigabit-... https://www.amazon.com/SALAN-Ethernet-Portable-Internet-Conv... But it's not competing with those, it's competing with the copper port which is already built into most devices. Another thing that would work is something like this (also $5.99), but with one of the ports as fibre: https://www.amazon.com…

> (quality may vary):

Yep. Good NICs last for approximately forever, life's way too short to deal with maybe-flaky NICs, and the price difference between the Amazon Special and something that's going to be reliable is -what- two big boxes of Cheerios? Two dozen eggs? Not. Worth it.

> But it's not competing with those, it's competing with the copper port which is already built into most devices.

Correct! That's part of why I was so very surprised to see you suggesting that extremely cheap PCI Express and USB adapters would "solve the chicken and egg problem".

> The point being you need some cheap way to plug in existing copper devices if you run fibre to the endpoints.

That's called a multi-port switch. Netgear sells five-port gigabit ones for like 20 USD. Switches that have two SFP+ cages and eight copper gigabit ports [0] are six times the price of a cheap-o Netgear switch, but are something that's going to last at least a decade. It's also pretty uncommon to find SOHO switches that have SFP+ cages and don't have at least one fixed copper port.

> This plus $5 for a transceiver is pretty close at $15:

If you're connecting a single device, why the hell would you use that when you could slap a copper SFP or SFP+ module in the switch's cage and run a cable? If you're connecting multiple devices, then either install multiple copper modules and run multiple cables, run multiple copper cables from fixed copper ports on the switch, or put a switch where the existing copper devices are.

[0] https://mikrotik.com/product/css610_8g_2s_in>

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

#322

Post by ridiculous_fish »

I bought one of these as soon as I heard about it ($74 from eBay) and tested it against my USB-4 AQC113 mainstays ($87, IO CREST brand on Amazon), from my MBP.

The new RTL-based adapter is physically smaller, runs way cooler, but only gets ~6 Gbps from my Mac to my Linux box, with a lot of jitter (iperf3).

The AQC adapter is all metal, gets uncomfortably hot, and sustains 9.3 Gbps, no problem. It's about the same size as the middle adapter in the photo.

The USB-4 AQC adapters are only ~$13 more, and yet are significantly faster with lower jitter. I'm staying with those.

Hope that helps someone!

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

#323

Post by ssl-3 »

cyberax wrote: post #312
donatj wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cou…

Hah. I used a dremel tool, some radiators, and a bit of thermal glue to make my Mikrotik switch work reliably: https://pics.ealex.net/share/UxeSf_AWHLIuc-qzK5zl7JIgQvQDAZh... It's been like this for the last 3 years. And amazingly, I still can't find a 10G switch that is just as compact.

This is the kind of quality I want and expect from a website called Hacker News.

It's way more fun to see a real solution for a problem than it is to see someone complain that the cheapest available product is lacking in finesse.

Good stuff. Are you using RouterOS or SwOS on that little guy?

---

Related, here's a moneyshot of my Mikrotik Hex S that I've got in a portable rack: https://i.postimg.cc/cCJhfkv1/image.png

That very cheap gigabit copper SFP was running hotter than I'd like -- it probably would have been fine, but this rig is meant to run outside while camping off-grid in the sun in central Florida. So I put some heatsinks from my 3D printing stash on there and so far they've stayed put.

In this system, the Hex S is running OpenWRT and is configured as a PoE-powered managed switch. In that role, it switches packets and does VLAN stuff fine, and is probably a bit of overkill.

But it's also one of several layers of manual redundancy, which is important in that environment: One does not simply go to the store and buy special electronics in central Florida. So it isn't included in the travel kit, then it doesn't exist.

With one shell script, it stops being just-a-switch and becomes a router with all the usual services, plus SQM tricks and multiple WAN ports. The rig works well.

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

#326

Post by jasomill »

robotnikman wrote: post #285
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.

In my experience, its just best to stick with Thunderbolt when you want to make sure you are getting the best speed for external devices that require it (external SSD's, Graphics Cards, Network adapters) Much easier and reliable than navigating the confusing sea of USB standards

While I generally agree, there are still corner cases:

As I mentioned above, a Thunderbolt port can end up with less dedicated bandwidth than a 10 Gbps USB port due to PCIe lane configuration.

Thunderbolt 3 only provides 22 Gbps PCIe bandwidth even if only a single device is connected.

Apple's TB2-to-TB3 adapter will connect any TB2 device to any TB3 host, and any TB3 (not USB) device to any TB2 host unless it's bus powered, in which case you need to daisy-chain a second TB3 device with two ports to supply power.

While Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 PCIe are largely interchangeable, and while Thunderbolt 4 devices are backwards-compatible with Thunderbolt 3 hosts, USB 4 PCIe devices are not required to support Thunderbolt 3 hosts.

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

#327

Post by zrm »

simoncion wrote: post #321
zrm wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get copper ones for $5.99 (quality may vary): https://www.amazon.com/1000Mbps-Network-Performance-Gigabit-... https://www.amazon.com/SALAN-Ethernet-Portable-Internet-Conv... But it's not competing with those, it's competing with the copper port which is already built into most devices. Another thing that would work is something like this (also $5.99), but with one of the ports as fibre: https://www.amazon.com…

> (quality may vary): Yep. Good NICs last for approximately forever, life's way too short to deal with maybe-flaky NICs, and the price difference between the Amazon Special and something that's going to be reliable is -what- two big boxes of Cheerios? Two dozen eggs? Not. Worth it. > But it's not competing with those, it's competing with the copper port which is already built into most devices. Correct! That's part o…

> If you're connecting a single device, why the hell would you use that when you could slap a copper SFP or SFP+ module in the switch's cage and run a cable?

The problem to be solved is that you want to be able to put fibre inside the walls of the building instead of copper. Running a new cable to the switch closet is the thing to be prevented.

But if the wall jacks are fibre then you need some economical way of hooking them up to every printer and single-purpose device with a network port. If you have to buy another $100+ switch just to get from fibre to copper even when there is only one device near that jack, people aren't going to go for that.

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

#328

Post by JSR_FDED »

ssl-3 wrote: post #284
tomchuk wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… and a M1 MacBook will source 5V/3A all day long to a non-PD negotiated sink. Somewhere between the M1 and M3 Apple decided to buy into USB-IF compliance and limit to 500mA. Has lead to some very embarrassing “works on my computer” situations on prototype boards shared with my EE colleagues (I’m a software guy who dabbles in hardware when I need to)

It doesn't take PD negotiation to get 5v, 3A from a compliant source. A 5.1k resistor or two (quantity depends on placement in the overall circuit) is sufficient. This may be a matter of semantics, but I can't bring myself to call a resistor a negotiator. They only do one thing and they're very resistant to other options. :) With nothing connected to the CC line(s) at all, then there should be no output voltage on Vc…

I’m printing this out for next time I’m stuck on an island.

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

#329

Post by papaver-somnamb »

10GbE adoption feels different from the successful string of standard speeds that came prior, since the market congealed around one standards family per Ethernet speed circa say 100Base-TX. We've heard stories as horrific as RJ45 assemblies heating up to a degree such that thermoplastic would flow.

Was some threshold crossed where 10Gbit over CAT6-whatever cabling is crossing physics thresholds? Or perhaps 10Gbit was brought to market when tech supporting copper connections wasn't yet mature enough?

Post reply on HN