New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper

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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.

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)

This is not what’s anti consumer, technical specifications can be confusing, it’s cable companies selling at Best Buy “gold plated” “HD ready” “braided fiber” “other bs” that is anti consumer. If you’re thinking about usb versions, you’re far from the normal consumer

No, they just renamed things when new standards were released (3.1 and 3.2). 20Gbps wasn't possible before 3.2, and it called Gen 2x2 at the time of release.

5 and 10 Gbps were renamed, though.

5 Gbps first was USB 3.0, then 3.1 Gen 1, then 3.2 Gen 1.

10 Gbps first was 3.1 Gen 2, then 3.2 Gen 2x1.

3.2 Gen 1x2 is also 10 Gbps, but physically different

That is technically correct, but "b" has never been an accepted abbreviation for baud (which was Bd) and the naming of the first versions of the PCIe, USB 3 and SATA speeds, which were done by Intel, were obviously in contradiction with the industry standards and intended to confuse the customers.

Previously to these standards promoted by Intel, the 1 Gb/s Ethernet used the same encoding and it was rightly called by everybody "1 Gb/s", not "1.25 Gb/s", because the gross bit rate has absolutely no importance for the users of a communication standard.

Only Intel invented this marketing trick, calling PCIe 1.0 and 2.0 as 2.5 and 5 Gb/s, instead of 2 and 4 Gb/s, and similarly for USB and SATA, where e.g. SATA 3 is called 6 Gb/s, but its speed is 4.8 Gb/s.

To be fair, what Intel did was not unusual, because in the computing industry there has been a long tradition of using fake numbers in marketing for various things, like scanner or video camera resolution ("digital" zoom, "interpolated" resolution), magnetic tape capacity ("compressed" capacity), and many others.

And USB gen 4x4 is for off-roading.

The exterior of the USB A connector stayed the same. The number of pins increased when we went from USB 2 to 3. So, even in this case, it’s slightly more complicated. The colors helped because the capabilities were very different between the ports. But when the USB IF increased the number of options (and reduced the size of the connector), different colors became impossible to do.

The problem is that there are too many uses for one connector. But this is wha we wanted - a reduced number of standardized connector/power options.

I think the Rd pulldown options are for 0.9/1.5/3A without PD negotiation.

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 Vcc. It shouldn't be 5v @ 3a, or 500mA, or anything else -- it should be ~exactly 0v, and therefore also 0a.

A resistor or two tells the power source what we want. Without it (or some, you know, actual PD negotiations), we get nothing.

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A careful reader will note the repeated quantity distinction. Let me explain that.

Every USB C socket has both CC1 and CC2 pins. They're on opposite side of the connector and get used for sorting out PD, and for detecting the cable's connector orientation (if/when that matters).

But a cromulent USB C to USB C cable can have just 1 CC wire, and that's OK. It works; it isn't even wrong. To get such a cable to coax 5v from a 5v/3a source and get power for a prototype widget on Gilligan's Island, with the cable already cut in half to get at the wires inside: Wire up power and ground to your prototype. And put a 5.1k resistor between that single CC wire and ground. Voila: We've requested 5v at up to 3a.

Or: If we're being a bit more proper and snooty and want to do it The Right Way, and we actually have a USB C jack to prototype with, then that more-ideally takes two 5.1k resistors; one to pull CC1 to ground, and another to pull CC2 to ground. This does the same thing, but it does it on the connector side of things instead of the daunting no-mans-land of wires. Only one of these resistors will ever be used at one time.

Or: If we have a USB C jack and can only scrounge up one 5.1k resistor (maybe we only have a single #2 pencil to whittle down to 5.1k of resistance), or we're being particularly lazy, then that's OK too. Pick CC1 or CC2 and put 5.1k between there and ground. It will work with the cable plugged in one way, and it won't work with the cable flipped 180 degrees. That can be enough to get a thing done for the moment or whatever. (There's no solution that is as permanent as a temporary one.)

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These are some of the things I learned when I was in the field and needed a 5v, >2.5a power supply to replace one that had died. I said to myself, "Self, just go over to Wal-Mart and get a 3a USB C power brick that comes with a cable, cut and splice that cable to fit the widget that needs power, and call it done. If it dies in the future, replacing it will be intuitive and fast."

So dumb ol' me went to Wal-Mart and bought exactly that, and I quite confidently set forth with the splicing.

This did not work. At all.

And that was a harsh rabbit hole to dive into, but it was ultimately fine. After I got back that evening I soldered a 5.1k resistor (of 1206 SMD form) mid-span between the CC wire and ground, and finished the adapter-cable quite neatly with some adhesive-lined shrink tubing.

Doing it this way got the customer's gear working faster than ordering the "right" parts and waiting for them show up would have, and it still works. That's all been a few years ago now; I consider it to be as permanent as anything ever really is.

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.

Note: If it just needs 5V power (Like many microcontroller-focused devices), USB C is convenient, because chargers and cables are ubiquitous. And they all (WIth exceptions like the one you mentioned) support 5V DC power.

Bonus: YOu can enable USB 2.0 data transfer as well for firmware updates, computer interfaces etc.

So: Cheap/ubiquitous part, everyone has cables + AC adapters to their local plug: I think it's a great default power connector.

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 between a physical port and the electrical/protocol specs).

I repaired device like that a while back - it only took two half-cent resistors and a half-assed soldering job to make it compatible with standard USB-C cables and chargers: https://www.nfriedly.com/techblog/2021-10-10-v90-usb-c/

Yeah, they got cheap. They either got cheap with the BOM, or they got cheap with the QC and never tested it with USB C power sources, or they got cheap with the spec and it's working as-designed.

It just takes a couple of insignificant resistors and a USB C socket that brings out CC1 and CC2 to pads on the board to do it right. I wrote about how that works in a sister comment if you want to read more.

But those devices will charge/work just fine with any bog-standard USB A to USB C cable, alongside any decent power brick with USB A outputs. It doesn't have to be the exact cables they came with.

It's annoying in the "you cheap bastards" sort of way, but regular A to C cables will work.

(If it's really important to you, then it can be possible to hack in a couple of 5.1k resistors inside the cheap-bastard devices and make them work with regular USB C power bricks and regular USB C to C cables. The resistors will tell the source to provide 5v at up to 3A. All compliant USB C cables are required to safely pass 3A.

The mod can range from very easy, to somewhat problematic, to "fuck this, I quit". In reality, there might already be pads on the board to connect CC1 and CC2 to ground; just solder in the resistors. Or, the pins are probably brought out at the connector itself, so it can be bodged with some extra wire.

But reality is a cruel mistress and not all available PCB-mounted USB C connectors expose CC1 and CC2 at all, although in a sane and pure world absolutely all of them should.)

[tl;dr, just keep an A to C cable with the devices, always have USB A where they get used, and forget about it. The next round of cheap stuff will be better, worse, or the same, and that's a future problem.]

To be fair, lightning only looks sensible because it never did anything other than USB2 and power delivery.

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.

It allows manufacturers to clear old stocks of cables by rebranding them as latest products.

USB 1+2/3/4 are basically unrelated standards under the same USB umbrella. USB4 especially is just Thunderbolt/PCIe x4 with features. If Betamax was branded as "VHS 2.0" instead of being a separate standard it would have been felt similar to the USB4 situation.

Yeah I what I would give to have been a fly on the wall in the room where they decided to roll with such an obviously terrible and stupid naming scheme. Did anyone protest? Did anyone boldly dissent? Or did they all really just sit around and pat themselves on the back?

I really, really wish somebody would explain to me what thr USB consortium was smoking, yeah. I cannot explain it.

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.

According to wikipedia the current marketing names for USB are just their speed: USB 5/10/20/40/80 Gbps. No version numbers or anything else.

The modern usb naming is to just list the speed or power output of the port.

Rather than some absurd version number it’s now just “USB 20 Gbits”

Yup.

TVs too.

For those of us who don’t know, how does it save power vs a 1gbe running at low throughput?

Don’t we need at least four for 100 Mbps?

Low cost, as in not data center/server grade hardware.

$99 when I look at the entry in https://frame.work/marketplace/expansion-cards

IKEA smart home hub is also 100mbit.

That hasn't been true on switched networks in probably 20 years or so.

Isn’t that only relevant for network topologies that rely heavily on broadcasting to multiple nodes. Eg token ring, WiFi and powerline adapters?

For regular Ethernet, the switch will have a table of which IPs are on which NIC and thus can dynamically send packets at the right transmission protocols supported by those NICs without degrading the service of other NICs.

We have switches now, hubs just don't exist anymore. Switches are not affected by some devices having a lower speed.

Is that really true? If so, is there a saner way to handle this than upgrade all the things to 10GBE? Like a POE ethernet condom that interfaces with both network and devices at native max speeds without the core network having to degrade?

That is complete nonsense and not how switched networks work.

You can just do a mix.

Most of my devices only need 1G or even 100Mbps. No reason to switch to fiber. 1G/2.5G copper ports don’t use that much power.

For 10G+ things, it’s fiber or DAC first if possible then RJ45 if it’s the only option.

Then my backhaul between rooms is just single mode fiber, good up to 800G. Plug in a small switch at the end and you go back to RJ45 and PoE.

I only have 10G though (to transfer large files/RAWs between my computer and my storage). Something faster would be nice because NVMe SSDs can go 50G+ but that equipment is pricey and power hungry.

Wiring ports for humans to use in a flexible and future proof manner (as in a single family home, for instance) gains a lot of utility with PoE.

The convenience and flexibility of PoE would always push me towards copper wiring.

I think the point he is making is that the industry first went with a 10g single link, and then 40g over 4 links. Then they figured out how to do 25g over a single link, and 100g over 4 links. Those 25g/100g are common for enterprise switches. It might be fairer to say 40g is dead, 10g still has use cases.

Edit to add: If you want an example, these are the NVidia ConnectX nics available from FS.com, the lowest end one is 25g, then 100g, 200g etc.

https://www.fs.com/uk/c/nvidia-ethernet-nics-4014

I just wish someone would come out with a PCIE 4x1 capable card with SFP - my main desktop’s non-GPU expansion slots are all 4x1 electrically and even the one you linked is a 3x2. As far as I can tell the only 4x1 cards available are RTL8127 or AQC113 RJ45 ones :(

I suppose an NVME riser is also an option, albeit janky.

I'm actually surprised at the amount of 2.5/5 gear I've been coming across lately, especially in the 2.5 space as more ISPs are pushing for gigabit+ to the house.

Verizon's been issuing a wireless router with 10G WAN and several 2.5G ports and MoCA support that includes a 2.5G adapter and they use that across all their current connection types. I was delighted to see that when I got the router a couple years ago.

It's not that much considering people pay $100+ for cable/internet and/or >=$(15 * n) streaming services PER month. Some people might want faster transfer speeds or low latency. For the price of two or three months of internet and streaming/cable you get a very fast LAN if you so desire. If you don't need it then don't spend the money.

10 years ago, you spent $40 for a few port unmanaged gigabit switch and $80-100 for the bottom tier web-managed crap.

That corresponds to $50 and $105-130 in today's money.

Now you can get it 10 times faster with an OK management layer for $150. This is after a -long- time of 10gbps prices stagnating.

10gbps is unexpectedly cheap.

Considering what you get and the historic prices of 10GbE those are absolute steals.

How much would they need to cost before you'd consider it cheap? If you want CHEAP then 10GbE is not for you in 2026.

Keep in mind that $275 today is the same as $140 in January 2000. Tech gadgets used to be far more expensive, both in real terms and as a percentage of average income.

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

I don't configure anything on the mikrotik. Out of the box it's a dumb switch and that is all I want.

> The Mikrotik switches are also fanless, and 10GbE SFP+ adapters throw off a lot of heat.

If you are talking about copper SFP's, then that's the problem: copper. It takes a lot of energy to drive a wire at GHz speeds, not so much with an optical link (though it's getting much better.) I have only ever felt luke warm optical and DAC SFP's. Copper 10 Gb SFP's are burning hot. I avoid using copper and run fiber.

I use mikrotik equipment extensively (as in hundreds/ thousands of them over the years), while I disagree with a lot of of this, the post is absolutely correct about the ridiculous password on a sticker requirements they introduced a few years ago. The pw text is incredibly small and the way it’s printed (dpi and font) makes it very difficult to differentiate certain characters. Also the way you initially connect to them when they’re new out of the box to then enter this obnoxious password has several issues/challenges. It used to be so easy and convenient to configure brand new mikrotik devices in the past, and now it’s become a task I dread and has even caused us to buy non- mikrotik gear in several cases.

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.

in the lower end space kind of, however in many respects no they don’t. Ubiquity would be their main competition, but ubiquity equipment is cloud first whereas a strong point of mikrotik has been that you do not need a centralized cloud controller (ie local first). Also in terms of the vast capabilities of mikrotik equipment at its price point, no there is absolutely no real competitor. (Maybe PFsense is the closest competitor with strong feature set)

Ubiquiti, Juniper, Firewalla or Alta Labs?

I gotta say, I love my macbooks. Every Apple laptop I've owned that has USB-C ports will happily charge itself from a 5V/1.5A wall charger (albeit extremely slowly).

They probably require higher voltages but I havent seen one myself. I usually just charge y laptop with my phone charger, what is it, 18 watts? Don't care, charges my laptop and the phone that is plugged into it overnight. Why charge at faster speeds when there is no need to

Laptop charges fine regular 5V as well.

My Thinkpad T490 will happily take any power provided voltage is high enough (15V+).

Great. So we got EU laws to mandate USB-C chargers and then get manufacturers that flaunt the spirit of the law by rejecting lower wattages.

A Mac mini at home used 4.64w averaged over the last 30 days. Even under load it just sips power.

The issue might not be the wattage bit rather the minimum voltage. (Some?) Macs seems to charge at 15v already, most laptops need 20v

Most laptops will take 45W. There might be some workstations that don't, but even gaming stuff with 5080s will charge on 45W.

And when ssh is down because you OOMd or something else?