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USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness - Dennis Schubert
(overengineer.dev)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Thanks for sharing. This is very timely because my gaming pc had it's ethernet port fried during a lightning storm this weekend. I grabbed my anker "Anker USB C Hub, PowerExpand 6-in-1 USB C PD Ethernet Hub". One thing I noticed is that it appears to have a different ethernet than your anker device. I'm seeing a ASIX AX88179 USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter.
I'm very much a novice in this space, but is using a USB ethernet adapter preferable to a wireless access point that is close to my machine? And if so, does it make any different if my USB ethernet adapter also is used for additional USB ports? And if I am shopping just for an ethernet adapter, what manufacturer controller should I be trying to find for a windows machine?
Almost certainly. Always go wired when possible. Not only will the wired device be faster, there will be more bandwidth available for other devices still using wireless. Wireless is a shared transmission medium you want as few devices using it as possible.
Thanks, some folks on reddit were saying the ethernet to USB degrades the speed of a native ethernet port or PCI (unfortunately my ITX build has no extra PCI slots). But even if I took a minor hit in speed, I prefer the consistency of having no packet loss. I live in a high density area with a lot of wifi networks nearby.
Ideally should I try to find a Intel Ethernet device?
If you have a native Ethernet port, use that. If you don't, ethernet over USB-C or on a PCI card is approximately as good. A USB 3.0 adapter + port is technically slower, but if your network isn't capable of speeds faster than a gigabit, the adapter won't be the limiting factor. For most people, these are all good solutions. Faster networking equipment is still somewhat specialty/niche.
USB 2.0 adapters/ports can cause problems though, as it's capped around half a gigabit. While this likely won't affect your access speeds to the public internet, it will likely slow file transfers to other devices on your home network.
The chipset maker isn't a perfect heuristic, as shown in the article, but I've had pretty good luck with Intel and Marvell.
It'll be limited by the USB controller really. USB ports on one controller share bandwidth so if you're using most of the available bandwidth (such as on the old 3 gigabit/s USB3 ports) you might notice some lost speed but otherwise you should have plenty of bandwidth for a gigabit connection
Honestly if you've already got something that works I wouldn't bother buying something else because it might theoretically be better
So my fried Ethernet port is stacked on top of 2 specialty USB 3.2 Gen2 ports separate from the regular 3.2 Gen 1 ports. Any advantages using those 3.2 Gen 2 ports with a USB ethernet? Do I need to make sure the USB adapter is rated for that. Asrock B550 ITX Phantom Gaming specs for reference: https://pg.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B550%20Phantom%20Gaming-ITXax/index.asp
So USB 3 has a super confusing naming convention nowadays. In short, "USB 3.0" has been renamed at least twice since it was first introduced and the naming conventions have simply gotten more confusing as time goes on. The one good thing I can give USB-SIG at this point is that bigger number does in fact equal more better
In your specific case, it really shouldn't make any difference what port you plug into because we're talking USB speeds of between 5Gbit/s and 20Gbit/s which of course is far more than the 1Gbit/s (plus some for protocol overhead) you need for a gigabit Ethernet connection