Live data from Hacker News

New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

jeffgeerling.com

361–370 of 384 posts

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

#361
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…

> Then we decided to just have no markings at all on USB C cables.

I'm shocked the LTT TrueSpec cables are the first I'm aware of to so such a small and basic thing. I have so many USB C cables and no idea which are power only, USB 2 only, or what. Such a mess

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

#362

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…

I have an Intel NUC where 10 Gbps devices can run faster when plugged into the 3.1 Gen 2 ports than the Thunderbolt 3 ports under NVMe load, due to the former having dedicated PCIe lanes and the latter sharing the PCH lanes with the M.2 slots, which could be highly relevant if I were doing heavy disk I/O over a 10 Gbit Ethernet adapter. This is more than a mild annoyance in the case of faster Thunderbolt devices like…

Probably cheaper and freed up PCIe lanes for desktop boards (marketing?) now yeah it doesn't make a lot of sense.

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

#363
post #346
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full, multiport 10GbE switches are still rather pricy. You could look at 2.5Gb or 5Gb port routers that have a 10Gb input. You won't be able saturate it with a single device, but you would using multiple devices. Ubiquiti has some nice stuff.

https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/usw-aggregation https://mikrotik.com/product/crs304_4xg_in https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DLGLRTGF

The Microtik in the link draws 15 watts at idle...

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

#364
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep a few of these around to deal with this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/6323 Very annoying though! The devices are just missing a couple resistors which is probably less than a cent on the BOM.

Wow, thanks for sharing this. Like the parent commenter, I have an increasing number of cheap devices like this. I wonder if anyone sells an "enclosed" version of this product. This won't survive 5 minutes in my house, haha. A quick google I found one but they're $17 each (!) and it's from a site I've never heard of and can't vouch for, so not bothering to link it here. I'm really surprised there aren't a number of t…

Adafruit sells enclosures for them, too.

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

#365

I remember getting my first laptop with gigabit ethernet in 2005, more than 20 years ago! I'm surprised 10gbit is still so uncommon and eyewateringly expensive. And I don't just mean the adapters which are coming down in price finally but also the switches. For more than 10 years we've had semi managed gigabit switches for 25€ like the TP-SG108E. 10gbit is still crazy expensive. Even though it is quite needed these d…

10GB ethernet switches will never be cheap because of the power requirements. Just get a 25GB switch and skip 10GB all together.

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

#366
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that would be like wiring a standard North American household wall outlet with 240VAC. Technically possible, but will probably fry anything not expecting it.

I came across a group of racks in the IT room in a (US) factory once that had 208v on their standard NEMA 5-15R sockets. Their global-market IT stuff didn't care at all. But some of the US-market audio stuff I was integrating came with old-school linear power supplies, and those items cared a great deal.

Have run into that exact thing also, not that the sockets were 5-15R but IEC C13 in a rack CDU. But someone had some adapter pigtails from C14 to a standard NEMA socket, of course that doesn't change the voltage at all. Hilarity ensued.

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

#367
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?

Fiber is way easier to run than copper. If you already have copper just use that to run the fiber.

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

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having recently terminated a nice name brand Cat6A jack (ICC brand), I’m quite unimpressed by the state of category cable shielding:

The termination comes with basically no instructions.

The connector shell contacts the shield by squishing it between the shell and the cable jacket. With a zip tie, helpfully supplied with the connector. Good luck applying much (any) compression force. Never mind that CAT6A cable jackets come in various sizes, are not manufactured to tight tolerances (why would they be?), and are quite squishy.

Compare to a high quality F connector, which is highly engineered, less expensive than a decent Cat6A jack, and makes excellent contact to the cable shield without much fiddling.

The switch that connects to it has no grounding terminal of any sort. It uses an external isolated power supply. Admittedly, the ground connection on a switch is probably doing very little at frequencies of hundreds of MHzz

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

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 Gb is cheap! … $150 … $275. San Francisco checking in.

A single eero or Ubiquiti AP will be $150-300 depending on the exact capabilities, so if you're pricing out how to network your house I'd say the switch looks pretty good b

The UniFi U7 Lite is $99 and appears to be every bit as good as the more expensive gear unless you want 6GHz or need extra radios or have clients with more than two spatial streams.

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

#370
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gets even worse. I now have two cheap Chinese gadgets (a checki printer and a tire inflater) that have USB-C ports for charging, but will only charge wi…

Ah that's a fun misuse of USB ports. The companies will often even dodge issues with the USB-IF by labeling the ports as Type C and letting the customer's mind fill in the word USB. I wish these devices would just use barrel jacks, labeled with the voltage and polarity. But these manufacturers know that the USB-C port weighs into buying decisions (and they know that most people have zero clue about the difference bet…

My aftermarket android auto display uses the type c connector for power input - wired directly to raw vehicle power. It will not run on 5v. It doesn't negotiate pd either. It just expects around 13 volts right on the power pins, and the supplied power cable does exactly that. It's portable too, which means that some poor person plugged their cable into their phone and blew it up.
Post reply on HN