Well, this is about USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, which is a mess created by USB IF for good old, blue USB A connectors. Not USB-C complexity.
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 is the very rarely supported 20Gb/s variant of USB 3, and making devices now that require that for full performance is a weird decision, with high-speed capable ports generally having wider support for either USB4 or Thunderbolt3+. I imagine the reason would be that some chip with an otherwise poor market fit got cheap...
Throwing this into the mix definitely doesn't improve the USB-C "what does this port support" conundrum, but this specific one predates USB-C and is not at all something you'd normally hit.
3.2 Gen 2x2 (and the occasionally relevant 1x2 if you have a weak cable) are USB C only.
USB C ports and cables have 4 USB 3 "superspeed" lanes rather than two. When you use an A to C cable only one pair of those connects. The point of the "x2" modes is that they use the second pair of lanes that would otherwise go unused.
Except of course they don't always go unused. DisplayPort Alternate Mode sends DisplayPort over those two "unused" lanes getting you USB 3 data alongside a half speed DisplayPort connection. (or alternatively full speed DisplayPort on all four and only USB 2), and then of course Thunderbolt 3 and modern USB4/TBT4 use all four lanes and tunnel everything.
10 Gb/s Ethernet interfaces do not require 20 Gb/s USB ports for reaching maximum performance, they already reach that on 10 Gb/s USB ports, despite of what the writer of TFA believes.
The main application of 20 Gb/s USB ports is to connect external NVMe SSDs, when faster USB 4 or Thunderbolt ports and SSDs are not available.
For an external NVMe SSD on USB, a 20 Gb/s USB port will double the throughput, unlike for a 10 Gb/s Ethernet interface where any improvements are completely negligible.
I do not think that 20 Gb/s USB Type C ports are "very rarely supported". Every mini-PC or desktop motherboard that I have bought during the last 10 years had at least one such USB port.
Such ports appear to be rare only on laptops, because most laptops have very few USB ports.
> 10 Gb/s Ethernet interfaces do not require 20 Gb/s USB ports for reaching maximum performance, they already reach that on 10 Gb/s USB ports, despite of what the writer of TFA believes.
While this may be theoretically (almost) possible, I’m quite sure this is absolutely not the case in practice.
For example see these benchmarks of one of the more recent USB to Ethernet chipsets [1], that can reach ~9.5 Gb/s on USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 but only between ~6.2 to ~7.3 on 3.2 Gen 2x1 laptops.
Edit: Haha, didn’t realise TFA was by the same author as these benchmarks but he’s done a lot of testing and benchmarking of these kind of devices over a long time, and it agrees with all the other benchmarking from other people I’ve seen too!
In Ethernet, "10 Gbps" refers to the actual Ethernet frame throughput. The raw physical coding rate is usually somewhere around 10.3125 Gbps to account for this.
In USB 3.2 Gen 2x1, the actual USB packet throughput is 9.697 Gbps and the "10 Gbps" refers to the raw encoding rate.
This difference means you are guaranteed to lose at least a few hundred Mbps off maximum performance. It's not really a practical concern, but it's not an error to say 10 Gb/s USB ports lack the bandwidth needed to support the maximum performance of a 10 Gbps USB Ethernet adapter.
> 10 Gb/s Ethernet interfaces do not require 20 Gb/s USB ports for reaching maximum performance, they already reach that on 10 Gb/s USB ports, despite of what the writer of TFA believes.
The first half is true, the second half is not. Remember overhead. You don't need 20GB/sec, but you need to take into account the USB overhead.
> The main problem is USB-C's bandwidth complexity - especially when paired with the Realtek RTL8159 Ethernet controller, which requires USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) to get the full rated 10 Gbps speeds
Jeff's statement wasn't that 10 Gb/s Ethernet requires 2x2. It's that that requirement comes from a very specific controller.
>Every mini-PC or desktop motherboard that I have bought during the last 10 years had at least one such USB port.
Are you talking about USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 though? Because I've never seen any MiniPC with this port and as for motherboards, I checked my local retailer and only ~15% of currently sold ones have Gen 2x2 (mostly high-end ones).
Most of my mini-PCs have been Intel NUCs (or more recently an ASUS NUC). I also had some Gigabyte and Zotac mini-PCs and a few others from less well-known vendors. IIRC almost all had one such 20 Gb/s USB Type C port, unless they had one or two faster Thunderbolt ports.
With mini-PCs, I frequently use external SSDs, so I certainly used those ports at their full speed.
The only mini-PCs that I had in recent years without such a fast USB port were Arm-CPU based, as those are typically starved in fast peripheral interfaces in comparison with the Intel/AMD CPUs.
Both 10 Gb/s Ethernet and 10 Gb/s USB have bit data rates that are 3% lower than 10 Gb/s, due to encoding (64/66 bits for Ethernet, 128/132 bits for USB).
So the their maximum speed is approximately 9.7 Gb/s.
Then for Ethernet there is a protocol-dependent overhead, e.c. depending on whether TCP or UDP is used, and depending on whether standard packets or jumbo packets are used.
The TCP overhead can reach in the worst case up to close to another 3%, reducing the achievable TCP throughput to around 9.4 Gb/s.
The USB frames add some extra overhead, but it is normally not important in comparison with other factors that can reduce the throughput.
All that a 20 Gb/s USB port can do is to reduce the overhead of the USB frames, but that is a negligible improvement. Using jumbo Ethernet frames (which are 6 times bigger than standard frames), if both ends support them, is likely more useful for increasing the throughput, than using a 20 Gb/s USB port.
10 Gig ethernet is 10GBps usable rate (before packet overhead). The line rates are higher to accommodate this.
For 10GBase-R, it's typically 10.3125 GBps, with a 64/66 encoding. For 10GBase-T, it's 4 lanes with PAM-16 at 800 MBaud -> 12.8 Gbps raw.
It uses 128b/132b encoding so 10Gb/s USB ≈ 9.69Gb/s you do then have USB framing overhead but it's probably around 2% on typical 1500B ethernet frames. So all in you are losing probably 5% or so to overhead.
I am of the opinion that 5Gbe is a much more sensible speed for a laptop adapter right now as it uses half the power and can obviously run full wack on 10Gb/s USB so you're looking at like 5Gbe vs ~9.4Gbe.
Stop insisting on Cat.6A (and related) copper cables for speeds beyond 1000BASE-T (maybe beyond 2.5G by now), just use dumb multi mode fiber it's way easier technology-wise and if you want power you can have that as well.
At distances where Cat.6A is even an option the demands on the fiber are very low.
And it uses less power than the BASE-T PHY.
The cable at least without integrated power is very thin as well, unless you can't respect it enough to not kink it, in which case you'd want a thicker one just to prevent you from being able to break the fiber.
Point of clarification since it isn’t clear from the title. This isn’t a Framework product, but a product by Wisdpi designed for the Framework Expansion Card form factor.
I do wish there were something like Oculink, but with power available over the connector. USB-C does almost everything, but it seems the chips to break out PCIe lanes for USB4/Thunderbolt for higher speed devices are still a significant cost for accessories.
hey Nirav, dumb question: would it be possible to have usb-c ethernet adapters using intel chips in order to have vPro features on framework laptops (along with vpro-enabled intel chips) ?
That's probably the missing cherry on top, as having vpro once the framework motherboard gets reused as a home server it gives some manageability features.
I chuckled at 10G wired ethernet on a laptop. I mean in a docking station? Sure that seems reasonable. But fun none the less.
I appreciate the USB-C nature of the Framework's expansion ports, it does make real the entire reason that USB was created in the first place, hot plug slots. Still, I (and others) pointed out to Intel early on that using Ethernet with a specific packet type would be cheaper and just as fast (which the ATA over Ethernet folks proved), but then you wouldn't get the 'certification tax' that the USB consortium extracts. :-).
Cynicism aside, the design issues suggest that it might make sense in future laptops to have heat spreaders around the plug in port, although that makes things thicker and people obsess over thinness.
The problem with docking stations is they're more expensive than an ethernet adapter. I tried to use a few 2.5+Gbps dongles with my laptop(s) to avoid spending $400 on another Caldigit dock (TS4; I already have a TS3 with 1Gbps ethernet).
Unfortunately, all 3 USB-C dongles I tried had significantly worse performance than the built-in 1 gig ethernet on the dock, apparently using the RTL8156 chipset which is known to be unstable.
I've got a 4th dongle on the way to try next! If I buy enough of these things I'll have spent more than just buying the right dock in the first place.
> I chuckled at 10G wired ethernet on a laptop. I mean in a docking station? Sure that seems reasonable. But fun none the less.
What difference does a docking station make? Sometimes you want to spend a minute or two setting up your laptop in a more serious way, and that's just as reasonable with or without a docking station.
The "dock" comment made sense to me because I don't think that true "road warrior" laptop use and 10G Ethernet deployments would coincide all that often.
I've put a disproportionate number of hours and $$$ into my homelab over the years, and I still only have 2.5G Ethernet switches deployed. Most offices' (much less home/coworking space/etc.) network traffic is passing through single-gigabit switches.
I have a 5gbps symmetrical fiber connection at home, so I've spent a fair amount of time and money upgrading my homelab backbone to 10gbps. That includes a 10GBe connection to my desk, but I've had issues getting the connection to be reliable (terminating the shielded Cat6A I have in the walls is a pain). That drop hasn't been working for the past few months, so I've been on wifi instead; it hasn't been enough of an issue for me to invest the time in fixing it.
Back in the early days of wireless networking I had my laptop configured with the wireless and wired networks bonded. I want to say that was 2Mbps on the wireless, so if I was doing a big transfer I could walk over to a wired port in my house and plug in to get 100Mbps.
Others comments already mentioned multimedia, but for example where I work we have some development board and prototypes with 10g ethernet, but most developers have a laptop rather than a fixed station. Turns out smallish (but overly expensive) thunderbolt 10g adapters can be used for testing and even reach full thoughput in many cases.
My laptop is basically a desktop in a clamshell so I don't need a docking station (and it's like 5 lbs with crazy cooling so I can use it as, you know, a laptop). I work with large binaries (media) on a daily basis. I have a 1G ethernet port built in, but I'd love a 10G port. I'd absolutely make use of it (maybe not all 10Gs of it, but most of them). Besides, things are only going to get faster...
I have a Thunderbolt 10Gbe adapter. It's a larger form factor than a Framework expansion card and it has a metal case, so it dissipates heat well. Copper 10Gbe chipsets generate a lot of heat.
If you work with media having a 10G connection on a laptop isn't all that absurd. In fact slow network speeds are the main reason why people have to use things like Thunderbolt instead of using a NAS (e.g. offloading data on a film set).
Future proofing. Websites nowadays load tens of megabytes for a simple news page. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future a website consumes 500+ megabytes on the initial page load. That will take 40 seconds on a 100 megabit link and 400 milliseconds on a 10 gigabit link.
Try to load any modern website on dial-up. The connection will likely timeout before a full page load.
Every PCIe 10G ethernet card I've seen has a heatsink on it, sometimes covering the entire card or even have little fans on the heatsink.
Expecting it to work full time in a laptop is a bit of a stretch of the heat dissipation budget.
Also, the laptop he is working has the AMD FP8 chipset - depending on how the ports are setup, he might only get 10G USB, if the ports are allocated to video instead.
Pi 4 and 5 both idle around 3W. But a Pi 5 can pull up to 16W with a USB peripheral, full CPU load, and decoding 4k video. The Pi 4 / 5 will run OKish without a heatsink at idle wattages, but thermal throttle quickly if you attempt to do something intensive.
These realtek 10gbe chips are more in the range of the Pi Zero class machines (0.5W idle, 2W loaded) which don't often come with heatsinks though they might benefit from them. If it has a good thermal connection to a good thick ground plane on the PCB, that's worth almost as much as a passive heatsink on the top of the chip.
usb-c < card edge < motherboard integrated in terms of how much heat can be transfered through the connection. Where the motherboard would have the largest ground plane to soak up heat from such an IC and dissipate it passively. The usb-c module is worst case by being a small enclosed box with very little thermal connection through the plastic insulating housing. An aluminum enclosure might dissipate enough heat passively to make it pleasant to use.
Raspberry Pi 4 doesn't need a fan. People just like to put them on because because micromanaging CPU temperature is part of the hobby for some. Yes it might throttle its CPU speed when going full tilt for some time, but lets be real how many workloads require poor Raspberry Pi to be loaded 100% for prolonged periods of time?
From what I've gathered, heat absolutely does[1] affect[2] it[3]:
Subsequently, in 1967, Black of Motorola experimentally derived a median time to failure (MTTF, i.e., operational lifetime) model for EM in Al interconnects, showing that the time to failure due to EM is inversely proportional to both the current density and the absolute temperature of the interconnect.
Thermal cycles, heat, current, all contribute to degradations and failures. It just so happens that cycling is the worst and everyone knows "it's the power cycles that kills computers". Doesn't mean at all that electronics can't be damaged countless other ways.
To add perspective, an old-school 7805 voltage regulator dissipating just 1 watt is already impossibly hot to hold with bare hand (as me how I know). So 3-4 watts on a small module will make it noticeably hot.
I was doing a comparison of 10G ethernet NICs just yesterday and ChatGPT was insistent that they are scorching regardless of actual throughput. Unless you manually downshift and upshift the communication rate.
I'm having second thoughts about having one of those dongles on my desk all day for the same reason wireless charging seems wasteful.
I looked in to it and it seemed like 10gbit was much better over fiber. Ended up deciding that 2.5gbit is plenty. The 2.5 gear is significantly cheaper and runs cool.
> I looked in to it and it seemed like 10gbit was much better over fiber.
Yes, except that most devices use Ethernet. So, at the end of the day, you still need Ethernet cables unless you want to deal with an additional switch or converter in every room.
If you want to ackshually, both fiber and copper are empty pipes that can carry any layer 2 protocol, and are not inherently Ethernet. They only become Ethernet cables when they're connected to terminals that pass that protocol through them.
Unless we're defining some networking standard, "Ethernet cable" is a perfectly acceptable term. Everyone will understand what is meant. The added specificity you're asking for doesn't improve the quality of communication.
You're still talking about a cable. The cable may be compatible with those standards, but you can put anything through it. It's just a physical connection.
>And people nerdy enough to run 10GE at home might well run fibre. So, no, the specifity is needed and useful.
No, because if you say "which do you want? Ethernet or fiber?" no one will look at you like if you asked if they want salt or beef. It's technically incorrect, but everyone will understand what is being asked.
> You're still talking about a cable. The cable may be compatible with those standards, but you can put anything through it. It's just a physical connection.
If you want to ackshually, the post I was replying to was talking about what "devices use" and cables required for that, so it's in fact about what standards these devices support.
Apart from that, again, in the context of 10GE you can by no means assume copper when talking about an Ethernet port; SFP+ slots are quite common. Your assertion that "everyone will understand" is also something I plainly know to be untrue in my bubble. It may be true in the context of slower speeds, but for ≥10GE the general performance characteristics of twisted-pair copper transceivers are so bad as to make it into the crossover point from copper cabling into DAC cables and fibre.
And, honestly, the assumption that "Ethernet = copper cabling" is harmful for 10GE. Those transceivers are hot garbage in the literal sense, they run hot enough to warrant usage limitations on switches due to cooling/overheating limits, and they tend to be quite picky about cable quality on establishing links.
>the post I was replying to was talking about what "devices use" and cables required for that
Yes, that person said "most devices use Ethernet", which you correctly pointed out they meant to say RJ45. However, in the process of making that correction you made an unrelated error yourself in saying that fiber is Ethernet too.
>you can by no means assume copper when talking about an Ethernet port
You can, if by "Ethernet" you mean an RJ45 jack and its cable, which is a fairly common usage of the word. It doesn't matter that it's technically incorrect. The default idea of physical protocol that the word "Ethernet" invokes in most people is that of twisted pair copper cabling. If you take a random person and put in front of them a fiber optic cable carrying Ethernet and a copper cable carrying serial signals and tell them "would you mind unplugging the Ethernet cable?" they'll disconnect the copper cable.
>Your assertion that "everyone will understand" is also something I plainly know to be untrue in my bubble.
Oh, so you know several people who when presented with the dichotomy of Ethernet or fiber (because that's what the comment you replied to was about, as it put Ethernet in contrast with fiber), they'll be completely dumbfounded about what is meant, as if hearing gobbledygook?
Indeed, that's largely why I decided 10gbit at home isn't really worth it. The current 10gbit ethernet stuff is expensive and power hungry, the enterprise stuff is hard to use on consumer gear. And the only real use case is super fast access to a nas.
I got it solely because our ISP bumped our home fiber to 10Gb and it would’ve hurt my soul for the router to be slower than that. And hey, if you’ve already got a router with 10Gb ports available and ready to go…
I disagree with that for two reasons. First, my central switch is probably capable of both copper and fiber. Second, how many wired devices do you have spread around your house? Let's say I have an above average number of devices: a router, a NAS, two access points, and three desktops. Router, NAS, and one access point can all be adjacent to the switch and avoid any conversion hassle. The desktops are using fiber so no conversion hassle there. That leaves one copper cable or converter needed for the other access point.
I guess I have rather overestimated what a normal amount of wired devices is based on my own sample size. That or the opposite is happening with you.
My house has a POE doorbell, several POE cameras, 2 TVs that each get a connection to their attached android TV boxes, Wife's office gets a pair of connections, ditto with mine, then you've got the APs for the wireless bits + a few servers in the rack with the networking equipment.
Mind you I know I am on the high side, but I use that as the reference point. I'd figure a normal house would have 4-5 wired connections to my 20ish.
In that situation I'd basically consider the doorbell and cameras as a separate install.
That mainly leaves the TVs, which I would just throw on the wireless but for wiring I'd still say you run it to your central switching spot that handles both copper and fiber.
> If you have a fixed computer or NAS, stop making excuses and install a 10G fiber card in it.
It's hard to justify when Ethernet is catching up. Most new motherboards have a 2.5G port. High-end motherboards have 10G Ethernet ports. SFP cards take space, are ugly, and need directed airflow to stay cool. They are not worth it for a 4x increase in bandwidth at best.
You'd be amazed what exists on the market these days. For example, the pre-terminated InvisiLight fiber cabling is 0.6mm in diameter and has a 2.5mm bend radius. I've personally installed this cabling while making many 90 degree (and sharper in some cases) bends without any issues. That makes it easy to hide and trivial to fit right through doorways and other tight spaces too.
Having cabled my apartment with Cat 6 definitely made me prefer fiber, it would have been a breeze instead of pulling thick cables from my office to other rooms. Cat 6 also shouldn’t be bent or you risk it going out of spec, and modern fiber nowadays have bend radius comparable to (or even smaller than) Cat 6.
I see how sloppy some FTTH installs are and they all work fine, and this is for light that travels for long distances.
Unlike "5 Gb/s" USB, which in reality is 4 Gb/s USB, so a 5 Gb/s Ethernet interface cannot reach its maximum speed on a 5 Gb/s USB, the "10 Gb/s" USB is really 10 Gb/s, i.e. the difference between its real speed and 10 Gb/s is small enough to be negligible.
The same is true for 10 Gb/s Ethernet, whose speed is not exactly 10 Gb/s, but the difference from 10 Gb/s is also negligible.
Therefore, you do not need a 20 Gb/s USB to reach the maximum speed with a 10 Gb/s Ethernet interface, a 10 Gb/s USB port is good enough.
The overhead of data framing on USB is slightly higher than on Ethernet, so the maximum throughput on an USB 10 Gb/s Ethernet interface is a little lower than for a PCIe Ethernet NIC, but the difference is small enough to not matter. Usually other factors, like bad device drivers or inefficient programs, can cause much greater variations in Ethernet throughput.
The 9.4 Gb/s throughput obtained in TFA is perfectly reasonable when taking into account the packet overheads, which make impossible to reach 10 Gb/s for user data, regardless of hardware. A 20 Gb/s USB interface could not provide any serious improvement over that.
Before Jeff first talk about this, I got one of those cheap Ethernet adapters (with the new realtek chip) on aliexpress for ~55€. It works really well, but I don't have USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 hardware, so I only get ~4Gbps out of it. But I'm pretty happy to break the 1G barrier, and the adapter will be useful in the future when I get better hardware; and I don't have to go through a 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps step.
In a way, I kinda don't get the idea of an expansion card for ethernet, rather than just a dongle. Specifically, as in this case, where it sticks out from the side of the chassis.
If I'm on the go, I'll have to take it out of the chassis while it's in my bag so I don't damage it. In that case, it's easier to have a regular USB-C card in that port, and toss a dongle in my bag instead of the expansion card.
If I'm not on the go, I'm at a desk, and I'd still rather plug in a dongle than regularly swap an expansion card.
I'm not saying you'd never want the expansion card, but it feels pretty niche.
A lot of people use their laptop as a desktop replacement and kinda leave it in one spot or only move it between two spots (home desk/office desk) rather than as an actually portable take anywhere use anywhere situation
In that case I'd rather just have one of those big usb hubs that has every port on it. Rather than an adapter designed that it only works on one laptop. Sure in theory you could plug them in to any but the design of it is such that you'd snap the connector if you plugged it in to a normal port.
While a regular usb-c ethernet adapter has a flexible cable between the laptop and the bulky rigid part.
Thunderbolt hubs are rather amazing now; in the past they'd either get super hot and have reliability issues, or had severe bandwidth limitations (especially if using larger displays).
The current crop has been great for my needs — a couple models have 10G Ethernet built in (CalDigit is the one I'm using now), and most now have more than one Thunderbolt port that allows a high speed storage device to be used as well (in addition to a 5K or 4K display or two!).
My TB5 dock from OWC on a M4 Pro MacBook can run dual 4k 240hz displays, 2.5gb ethernet, and several peripherals no problem. It also provides 100W of power. All over a single cable. So good these days
I may have the same one and I love it so much. Plug one USB C-looking cable into my laptop, and two 32” monitors and a host of accessories light up as it starts charging. It’s the greatest docking station ever.
Those sucked so hard, were extremely finicky to plug in, and I was in constant terror of breaking it. Even the popout jack things were horrific in that respect.
I'm 1000% for wired connections where possible, but for laptops too thin to have one built inside of the frame the best choice is a proper docking station, ideally with a cable that isn't impossible to user replace.
Like the constant cries for an iPhone Mini, which subsequently sold terribly, because people like good battery life, a generous screen size, and feature-rich cameras. Apple didn’t learn because they went on to do the Air, but whatever.
The minis, despite being sold at the same time as SEs and having to share demand, did fine. And if you want to improve that situation the obvious answer is to pick one or the other, not to cancel both. If you want even better stats, much more than needed, wait 2-3 years between releases.
My best guess for Apple's actions is that despite there being a very real demand for a smaller phone, they don't think the discomfort is bad enough for people to switch to Android, so they don't even try. A small phone makes a lot of profit, but ignoring the demand also makes a lot of profit.
I agree, every product should only be as large as possible, have top of the line specs, and a price to match. Literally nobody exists in different market segments. There should only be one product in each category. You will purchase your Phone(tm) and be happy.
There’s nothing to “get”. The circuit doesn’t fit inside the slot for expansion cards. You could plug in a dongle instead, but then you’d have a big hole in your laptop with a cable sticking out. Or you could just get a wider laptop bag. They make them in multiple sizes, you know.
Technically all framework 13 laptops always have four things plugged into it because the ports are modular such that the user can choose which ports they want.
Unless you're crazy and leave the expansion ports unpopulated.
Er, no, then you'd use the regular USB-C expansion card and plug the dongle into that, and then the port becomes generally useful.
A wider bag doesn't solve it. The part that sticks out could still easily snag on something. I wouldn't want to take that risk, and I doubt many people would.
Not arguing, just saying that sometimes things come with compromises. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that some expansion cards don't fit in the expansion slot. There’s always going to be _something_ that needs a bit more space.
Having it stick out like that is such a stupid design. Almost as dumb as all the 2FA dongles. The USB-A ones that you could leave in actually made the most sense. Yes I know.
Frankly, considering this is a laptop, I wish they spent more effort on delivering a flush 1gbe module rather than a 10gbe module. It has become an elephant in the room every time someone asks about my framework laptop. It... sticks out like a sore thumb, per say.
As others have commented, this is not a Framework product. That's part of the beauty: they open source there designs, allowing for third parties to easily make things like this (and much more beside). I believe at some point someone in the community was trying to design one of those slim ethernet ports that expands open when you need it (the jack doesn't really fit). Apparently some of the mechanisms for doing so are still proprietary though.
The video mentions that drivers were needed to get the full speed on Windows, and that the Realtek Linux drivers didn't compile on a modern kernel. So it's probably software.
Realtek makes some pretty affordable networking chips but their Linux drivers can be a real gamble. Either it works out of the box or you're in for years of messing around.
> Realtek makes some pretty affordable networking chips but their Linux drivers can be a real gamble. Either it works out of the box or you're in for years of messing around.
And that's when it's a legitimate Realtek chip. Many years ago, I bought a 100M Realtek Ethernet card, expecting it to work out of the box on Linux; but it was actually a counterfeit, using a Silan chip instead of a Realtek chip, and the out-of-tree Linux driver (for Linux 2.4) that came with it on the CD was actually a driver for the Silan chip with the numbers filed off. I ended up writing and submitting a Linux 2.6 driver for it, just to make people stop blaming the Realtek driver for not working with the unrelated Silan chip.
I think most people do not have 10g UTP infrastructure they want to exploit, but many people do have 2 computers they'd like to connect together at high speed, and these people are far better served by just connecting those computers' Thunderbolt ports together. With nothing other than an admittedly pricey cable, you get 10, 20, or 40gbps links depending on the endpoints. That's the "something faster" that will work well for most people.
I have a 10GbE network in my house and a Framework 13 AMD laptop (7840U variant), I found that most of the available 10GbE adapters on the market get too hot, and after trying a few I settled on the UniFi USB4 10GbE adapter as it has enough thermal dissipation to be able to sustain full performance over an extended period of time. I don't see how you can dissipate enough heat in the Framework insert shells.
I'm not sure why you want to either really. I can't see many scenarios where the absolute portability of having a 10GBE adapter in the laptop is really necessary. I suspect the general use of these kind of things is for people docked at a desk, at which point its best served by a well cooled dongle or a chunky dock like a TS5
My use case is definitely while sitting at a desk in my home office where I can directly cable to my 10GbE switch. For other usage, I just stick to WiFi 7, which is usually plenty fast enough for most usage. I prefer connecting wired when doing downloads (Steam, OS upgrades, et al).
Only Framework could reincarnate godawful PCMCIA cards as proprietary USB-C dongles and be praised for it. Insanity. Maybe next they can bring back the XJACK.
No one wants to address the elephant in the room: it's a crap design for proprietary modules. Sure the design is open, can you use them anywhere else? Nope.
You're paying a premium for USB-C dongles that can't be used on any other brand of laptop. Apple is probably upset they didn't think of it first.
Of course you can use the modules on any other brand of laptop. It's not going to look pretty doing it, but I've routinely used the USB-C to USB-A, as well as the mini SSD, on a MacBook Pro.
Colleagues borrow them all the time when they need a SD card or MicroSD card reader. Is it as pretty as a dedicated reader for those cards? No, but it does the job.
Saying they're proprietary is misleading a bit. The form factor makes it awkward to use elsewhere but they work just fine anywhere you plug them into.
The weight/shape of the module will break the USB-C port in short order because it is solely supported by the connector.
For instance, by bumping the spatula hanging off your Mac.
For that matter, USB-C are crap connectors, I don't care how many graphs and BS data you show me stating they're the most reliable connector ever. I do not believe it.
They're the only types of connectors I've seen damaged repeatedly, and the only one with which I've personally experienced damage, and I've been using laptops since before many of you were born.
I understand your disdain for fandom but in this case this isn't a product by framework. This is a 3d part product resulting from framework's basic motivation and associated actions of nurturing a 3rd party ecosystem. I don't like fandom but we can admit framework's theoretical raison d'etre is pretty good
Sounds like the dual problem of "I want the thinnest" is the "I want the most powerful" on miniature equipment, and of course you run into an unbalanced situation
Honestly I don't see much of an use for 10Gbps in a notebook that can't be solved by a dongle when you actually need it
No one needs anything, but can and do I use more than 1Gbps from my laptop? Of course. 1Gbps is only ~125MB/sec transfer speed. When I’m copying large files to and from my home NAS, I often want more speed than that so a while ago I picked up a 2.5g adapter, later 5g, and now finally with these new chips a 10g adapter.
Same for my SFF PC which only came with 2.5g onboard and no extra slots because ITX and can now do 10g via the same USB adapter which is great.
> No one needs anything, but can and do I use more than 1Gbps from my laptop? Of course.
I agree, but laptops are severely power and storage limited. How many >100GB games or whatever can you really download and actually play on a typical laptop? If faster Ethernet increases power consumption, it's probably a negative overall.
Well, it's Framework we are talking about. My plan is to buy it because at some point of its lifecycle my Framework 12 motherboard will be used as a new node in my Homelab. :)
Yes, I have 5Gbit symmetric fiber, why would I want to limit myself to less speed than that on my laptop? I regularly peak out my Internet connection while doing Steam downloads and OS updates.
Yours is an “edge device” but I am root, so mine is a portable tool for managing and testing the network that does not have working WiFi access points attached to it or obviously I would not be there.
And yes, some of those links are above 1gbps so that the users can have individual 1gbps links.
More amazed by the complexity in bundling offers, of decking out your Framework device with 6 flush USB-C port extension ports sets you back 60 bucks already.
That's like a weird hidden tax.
In a network world where 1GB Ethernet randomly can handshake at 100Mbit still, getting reliably more than 3/4 of the advertised Bandwith from the Adapter seems quite harmless.
I like the modularity, but I'd feel better if it came with the "blanks" that just extends the inside USB-C port towards the outside.
I feel like things would not look like nickel-and-diming if those blanks came with the laptop, and they just priced them in the final price. Or even better, offered the option to "upgrade" one or several of those to whatever you need.
Framework’s single greatest marketing triumph is selling a $20 3.5 mm audio jack for a device that doesn’t have one but easily could (Framework 16) and somehow avoiding constant complaints/“so brave”/etc.
Well, this is about USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, which is a mess created by USB IF for good old, blue USB A connectors. Not USB-C complexity.
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 is the very rarely supported 20Gb/s variant of USB 3, and making devices now that require that for full performance is a weird decision, with high-speed capable ports generally having wider support for either USB4 or Thunderbolt3+. I imagine the reason would be that some chip with an otherwise poor market fit got cheap...
Throwing this into the mix definitely doesn't improve the USB-C "what does this port support" conundrum, but this specific one predates USB-C and is not at all something you'd normally hit.
> Not USB-C complexity
3.2 Gen 2x2 (and the occasionally relevant 1x2 if you have a weak cable) are USB C only.
USB C ports and cables have 4 USB 3 "superspeed" lanes rather than two. When you use an A to C cable only one pair of those connects. The point of the "x2" modes is that they use the second pair of lanes that would otherwise go unused.
Except of course they don't always go unused. DisplayPort Alternate Mode sends DisplayPort over those two "unused" lanes getting you USB 3 data alongside a half speed DisplayPort connection. (or alternatively full speed DisplayPort on all four and only USB 2), and then of course Thunderbolt 3 and modern USB4/TBT4 use all four lanes and tunnel everything.
10 Gb/s Ethernet interfaces do not require 20 Gb/s USB ports for reaching maximum performance, they already reach that on 10 Gb/s USB ports, despite of what the writer of TFA believes.
The main application of 20 Gb/s USB ports is to connect external NVMe SSDs, when faster USB 4 or Thunderbolt ports and SSDs are not available.
For an external NVMe SSD on USB, a 20 Gb/s USB port will double the throughput, unlike for a 10 Gb/s Ethernet interface where any improvements are completely negligible.
I do not think that 20 Gb/s USB Type C ports are "very rarely supported". Every mini-PC or desktop motherboard that I have bought during the last 10 years had at least one such USB port.
Such ports appear to be rare only on laptops, because most laptops have very few USB ports.
> 10 Gb/s Ethernet interfaces do not require 20 Gb/s USB ports for reaching maximum performance, they already reach that on 10 Gb/s USB ports, despite of what the writer of TFA believes.
While this may be theoretically (almost) possible, I’m quite sure this is absolutely not the case in practice.
For example see these benchmarks of one of the more recent USB to Ethernet chipsets [1], that can reach ~9.5 Gb/s on USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 but only between ~6.2 to ~7.3 on 3.2 Gen 2x1 laptops.
1. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/new-10-gbe-usb-adapte...
Edit: Haha, didn’t realise TFA was by the same author as these benchmarks but he’s done a lot of testing and benchmarking of these kind of devices over a long time, and it agrees with all the other benchmarking from other people I’ve seen too!
In Ethernet, "10 Gbps" refers to the actual Ethernet frame throughput. The raw physical coding rate is usually somewhere around 10.3125 Gbps to account for this.
In USB 3.2 Gen 2x1, the actual USB packet throughput is 9.697 Gbps and the "10 Gbps" refers to the raw encoding rate.
This difference means you are guaranteed to lose at least a few hundred Mbps off maximum performance. It's not really a practical concern, but it's not an error to say 10 Gb/s USB ports lack the bandwidth needed to support the maximum performance of a 10 Gbps USB Ethernet adapter.
> 10 Gb/s Ethernet interfaces do not require 20 Gb/s USB ports for reaching maximum performance, they already reach that on 10 Gb/s USB ports, despite of what the writer of TFA believes.
The first half is true, the second half is not. Remember overhead. You don't need 20GB/sec, but you need to take into account the USB overhead.
Ethernet is duplex though. 20Gb/s is the max throughput a 10Gb NIC can achieve.
So is usb superspeed. The tx and rx don't flip around like low/full/high speed
If you read carefully (emphasis mine):
> The main problem is USB-C's bandwidth complexity - especially when paired with the Realtek RTL8159 Ethernet controller, which requires USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) to get the full rated 10 Gbps speeds
Jeff's statement wasn't that 10 Gb/s Ethernet requires 2x2. It's that that requirement comes from a very specific controller.
>Every mini-PC or desktop motherboard that I have bought during the last 10 years had at least one such USB port.
Are you talking about USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 though? Because I've never seen any MiniPC with this port and as for motherboards, I checked my local retailer and only ~15% of currently sold ones have Gen 2x2 (mostly high-end ones).
Most of my mini-PCs have been Intel NUCs (or more recently an ASUS NUC). I also had some Gigabyte and Zotac mini-PCs and a few others from less well-known vendors. IIRC almost all had one such 20 Gb/s USB Type C port, unless they had one or two faster Thunderbolt ports.
With mini-PCs, I frequently use external SSDs, so I certainly used those ports at their full speed.
The only mini-PCs that I had in recent years without such a fast USB port were Arm-CPU based, as those are typically starved in fast peripheral interfaces in comparison with the Intel/AMD CPUs.
What about overhead? Can you truly do 10Gb/s networking on a 10Gb/s USB port? Would having such NIC on a 20Gb/s USB port not result in higher speeds?
Both 10 Gb/s Ethernet and 10 Gb/s USB have bit data rates that are 3% lower than 10 Gb/s, due to encoding (64/66 bits for Ethernet, 128/132 bits for USB).
So the their maximum speed is approximately 9.7 Gb/s.
Then for Ethernet there is a protocol-dependent overhead, e.c. depending on whether TCP or UDP is used, and depending on whether standard packets or jumbo packets are used.
The TCP overhead can reach in the worst case up to close to another 3%, reducing the achievable TCP throughput to around 9.4 Gb/s.
The USB frames add some extra overhead, but it is normally not important in comparison with other factors that can reduce the throughput.
All that a 20 Gb/s USB port can do is to reduce the overhead of the USB frames, but that is a negligible improvement. Using jumbo Ethernet frames (which are 6 times bigger than standard frames), if both ends support them, is likely more useful for increasing the throughput, than using a 20 Gb/s USB port.
10 Gig ethernet is 10GBps usable rate (before packet overhead). The line rates are higher to accommodate this. For 10GBase-R, it's typically 10.3125 GBps, with a 64/66 encoding. For 10GBase-T, it's 4 lanes with PAM-16 at 800 MBaud -> 12.8 Gbps raw.
It uses 128b/132b encoding so 10Gb/s USB ≈ 9.69Gb/s you do then have USB framing overhead but it's probably around 2% on typical 1500B ethernet frames. So all in you are losing probably 5% or so to overhead.
I am of the opinion that 5Gbe is a much more sensible speed for a laptop adapter right now as it uses half the power and can obviously run full wack on 10Gb/s USB so you're looking at like 5Gbe vs ~9.4Gbe.
Stop insisting on Cat.6A (and related) copper cables for speeds beyond 1000BASE-T (maybe beyond 2.5G by now), just use dumb multi mode fiber it's way easier technology-wise and if you want power you can have that as well.
At distances where Cat.6A is even an option the demands on the fiber are very low. And it uses less power than the BASE-T PHY. The cable at least without integrated power is very thin as well, unless you can't respect it enough to not kink it, in which case you'd want a thicker one just to prevent you from being able to break the fiber.
5GBASE-T interfaces often use 3x less power than 10GBASE-T
Point of clarification since it isn’t clear from the title. This isn’t a Framework product, but a product by Wisdpi designed for the Framework Expansion Card form factor.
Very cool to see an ecosystem developing around that form factor. Like the old PCMCIA, except not awful.
I do wish there were something like Oculink, but with power available over the connector. USB-C does almost everything, but it seems the chips to break out PCIe lanes for USB4/Thunderbolt for higher speed devices are still a significant cost for accessories.
Which they made in partnership with Framework.
hey Nirav, dumb question: would it be possible to have usb-c ethernet adapters using intel chips in order to have vPro features on framework laptops (along with vpro-enabled intel chips) ?
That's probably the missing cherry on top, as having vpro once the framework motherboard gets reused as a home server it gives some manageability features.
vPro requires the NIC to be connected directly to the PCH (over PCIe/CNV). This is going over USB, which won't cut it.
An Intel WLAN card in an M.2 slot on the mainboard might work (given your givens; a vPro enabled chipset).
I chuckled at 10G wired ethernet on a laptop. I mean in a docking station? Sure that seems reasonable. But fun none the less.
I appreciate the USB-C nature of the Framework's expansion ports, it does make real the entire reason that USB was created in the first place, hot plug slots. Still, I (and others) pointed out to Intel early on that using Ethernet with a specific packet type would be cheaper and just as fast (which the ATA over Ethernet folks proved), but then you wouldn't get the 'certification tax' that the USB consortium extracts. :-).
Cynicism aside, the design issues suggest that it might make sense in future laptops to have heat spreaders around the plug in port, although that makes things thicker and people obsess over thinness.
The problem with docking stations is they're more expensive than an ethernet adapter. I tried to use a few 2.5+Gbps dongles with my laptop(s) to avoid spending $400 on another Caldigit dock (TS4; I already have a TS3 with 1Gbps ethernet).
Unfortunately, all 3 USB-C dongles I tried had significantly worse performance than the built-in 1 gig ethernet on the dock, apparently using the RTL8156 chipset which is known to be unstable.
I've got a 4th dongle on the way to try next! If I buy enough of these things I'll have spent more than just buying the right dock in the first place.
> I chuckled at 10G wired ethernet on a laptop. I mean in a docking station? Sure that seems reasonable. But fun none the less.
What difference does a docking station make? Sometimes you want to spend a minute or two setting up your laptop in a more serious way, and that's just as reasonable with or without a docking station.
The "dock" comment made sense to me because I don't think that true "road warrior" laptop use and 10G Ethernet deployments would coincide all that often.
I've put a disproportionate number of hours and $$$ into my homelab over the years, and I still only have 2.5G Ethernet switches deployed. Most offices' (much less home/coworking space/etc.) network traffic is passing through single-gigabit switches.
I have a 5gbps symmetrical fiber connection at home, so I've spent a fair amount of time and money upgrading my homelab backbone to 10gbps. That includes a 10GBe connection to my desk, but I've had issues getting the connection to be reliable (terminating the shielded Cat6A I have in the walls is a pain). That drop hasn't been working for the past few months, so I've been on wifi instead; it hasn't been enough of an issue for me to invest the time in fixing it.
Reminds me of routers on the internet.
>I chuckled at 10G wired ethernet on a laptop.
Back in the early days of wireless networking I had my laptop configured with the wireless and wired networks bonded. I want to say that was 2Mbps on the wireless, so if I was doing a big transfer I could walk over to a wired port in my house and plug in to get 100Mbps.
Others comments already mentioned multimedia, but for example where I work we have some development board and prototypes with 10g ethernet, but most developers have a laptop rather than a fixed station. Turns out smallish (but overly expensive) thunderbolt 10g adapters can be used for testing and even reach full thoughput in many cases.
My laptop is basically a desktop in a clamshell so I don't need a docking station (and it's like 5 lbs with crazy cooling so I can use it as, you know, a laptop). I work with large binaries (media) on a daily basis. I have a 1G ethernet port built in, but I'd love a 10G port. I'd absolutely make use of it (maybe not all 10Gs of it, but most of them). Besides, things are only going to get faster...
I have a Thunderbolt 10Gbe adapter. It's a larger form factor than a Framework expansion card and it has a metal case, so it dissipates heat well. Copper 10Gbe chipsets generate a lot of heat.
If you work with media having a 10G connection on a laptop isn't all that absurd. In fact slow network speeds are the main reason why people have to use things like Thunderbolt instead of using a NAS (e.g. offloading data on a film set).
Ethernet comes with a completely different set of social norms, like not having a master and slave device.
I wish they would just have direct PCIe lanes. For most of the cards doing those speeds USB is just unnecessary overhead
They sort of do in the 16 with the dual M.2 adapter:
https://frame.work/pl/en/products/dual-m-2-adapter
People have been making custom OCuLink adapters and recently Framework developed its own:
https://frame.work/pl/en/products/framework-oculink-dev-kit
Future proofing. Websites nowadays load tens of megabytes for a simple news page. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future a website consumes 500+ megabytes on the initial page load. That will take 40 seconds on a 100 megabit link and 400 milliseconds on a 10 gigabit link.
Try to load any modern website on dial-up. The connection will likely timeout before a full page load.
This is the most dystopic use for that bandwidth I could possibly imagine.
Step 1 of displaying a web page is to download a small LLM from the server to create a rendering framework at run-time...
Next iteration of vibe-coding: you only ship the prompt.
Every PCIe 10G ethernet card I've seen has a heatsink on it, sometimes covering the entire card or even have little fans on the heatsink.
Expecting it to work full time in a laptop is a bit of a stretch of the heat dissipation budget.
Also, the laptop he is working has the AMD FP8 chipset - depending on how the ports are setup, he might only get 10G USB, if the ports are allocated to video instead.
New chips from Realtek burn < 2W for the chip and < 3-4W for the board: https://www.servethehome.com/cheap-10gbe-realtek-rtl8127-nic...
4W is TDP for some of Pi-style mini computers. Lots of them have fans.
Pi 4 and 5 both idle around 3W. But a Pi 5 can pull up to 16W with a USB peripheral, full CPU load, and decoding 4k video. The Pi 4 / 5 will run OKish without a heatsink at idle wattages, but thermal throttle quickly if you attempt to do something intensive.
These realtek 10gbe chips are more in the range of the Pi Zero class machines (0.5W idle, 2W loaded) which don't often come with heatsinks though they might benefit from them. If it has a good thermal connection to a good thick ground plane on the PCB, that's worth almost as much as a passive heatsink on the top of the chip.
usb-c < card edge < motherboard integrated in terms of how much heat can be transfered through the connection. Where the motherboard would have the largest ground plane to soak up heat from such an IC and dissipate it passively. The usb-c module is worst case by being a small enclosed box with very little thermal connection through the plastic insulating housing. An aluminum enclosure might dissipate enough heat passively to make it pleasant to use.
> The Pi 4 / 5 will run OKish without a heatsink at idle wattages, but thermal throttle quickly if you attempt to do something intensive.
Even with a heatsink and fan, I had to upgrade to a higher quality set to keep Jellyfin from thermal throttling a Pi5 while transcoding 4K video.
4k video transcoding is anything but an idle load.
Especially on the Pi 5, which has no hardware encoder to save on power consumption for that task. It's entirely in the CPU.
(Technically the Pi 4's hw encoder doesn't go up to 4K either, though, so I guess moot point).
Raspberry Pi 4 doesn't need a fan. People just like to put them on because because micromanaging CPU temperature is part of the hobby for some. Yes it might throttle its CPU speed when going full tilt for some time, but lets be real how many workloads require poor Raspberry Pi to be loaded 100% for prolonged periods of time?
If it throttles CPU it means by definition means that a fan helps. Also constant heat increases failure rate.
Cycles of heating and cooling are what increases failure rates. The thermal expansion and contraction causes issues.
That's one way to put it.
Another way is that my great grandchildren won't care about inheriting my collection of hobbyist SBCs, and therefore nor should I.
Permanent heat doesn't?
From what I've gathered, heat absolutely does[1] affect[2] it[3]:
Subsequently, in 1967, Black of Motorola experimentally derived a median time to failure (MTTF, i.e., operational lifetime) model for EM in Al interconnects, showing that the time to failure due to EM is inversely proportional to both the current density and the absolute temperature of the interconnect.
[1]: https://infinitalab.com/blog/ic-failure-analysis-defect-type...
[2]: https://resources.system-analysis.cadence.com/blog/msa2020-b...
[3]: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/14/15/3151#sec3-electronics-1...
Thermal cycles, heat, current, all contribute to degradations and failures. It just so happens that cycling is the worst and everyone knows "it's the power cycles that kills computers". Doesn't mean at all that electronics can't be damaged countless other ways.
Running plex/jellyfin :)
Does it go beyond 30 Metres?
Certified Cat6 cable gets you 10GbE up to 55m (and even 5e is workable), while Cat 6A goes to 100m.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair#Var...
...and yet they're still covered by a huge heatsink.
To add perspective, an old-school 7805 voltage regulator dissipating just 1 watt is already impossibly hot to hold with bare hand (as me how I know). So 3-4 watts on a small module will make it noticeably hot.
They aren't huge at all, the new RTL cards are tiny. I wish 2-port versions were available for a home server upgrade.
I was doing a comparison of 10G ethernet NICs just yesterday and ChatGPT was insistent that they are scorching regardless of actual throughput. Unless you manually downshift and upshift the communication rate.
I'm having second thoughts about having one of those dongles on my desk all day for the same reason wireless charging seems wasteful.
Yeah, 10Gb ethernet runs hot. I just rewired the house with 10Gb (we have 8Gb FTTP) and it's kind of upsetting how hot my Thunderbolt dock gets.
I looked in to it and it seemed like 10gbit was much better over fiber. Ended up deciding that 2.5gbit is plenty. The 2.5 gear is significantly cheaper and runs cool.
Yeah, I use DAC for the desktop and fibre between floors. It's just the Mac's desktop that uses RJ45 copper.
> I looked in to it and it seemed like 10gbit was much better over fiber.
Yes, except that most devices use Ethernet. So, at the end of the day, you still need Ethernet cables unless you want to deal with an additional switch or converter in every room.
Fiber/10Gbase-*R is Ethernet too. Please say copper/RJ45/base-T when you mean copper/RJ45/base-T.
If you want to ackshually, both fiber and copper are empty pipes that can carry any layer 2 protocol, and are not inherently Ethernet. They only become Ethernet cables when they're connected to terminals that pass that protocol through them.
Unless we're defining some networking standard, "Ethernet cable" is a perfectly acceptable term. Everyone will understand what is meant. The added specificity you're asking for doesn't improve the quality of communication.
That's why I added base-*R/base-T.
And particularly for 10GE the heat and power problems are due to the copper transceiver DSPs.
And people nerdy enough to run 10GE at home might well run fibre.
So, no, the specifity is needed and useful.
>That's why I added base-*R/base-T.
You're still talking about a cable. The cable may be compatible with those standards, but you can put anything through it. It's just a physical connection.
>And people nerdy enough to run 10GE at home might well run fibre. So, no, the specifity is needed and useful.
No, because if you say "which do you want? Ethernet or fiber?" no one will look at you like if you asked if they want salt or beef. It's technically incorrect, but everyone will understand what is being asked.
> You're still talking about a cable. The cable may be compatible with those standards, but you can put anything through it. It's just a physical connection.
If you want to ackshually, the post I was replying to was talking about what "devices use" and cables required for that, so it's in fact about what standards these devices support.
Apart from that, again, in the context of 10GE you can by no means assume copper when talking about an Ethernet port; SFP+ slots are quite common. Your assertion that "everyone will understand" is also something I plainly know to be untrue in my bubble. It may be true in the context of slower speeds, but for ≥10GE the general performance characteristics of twisted-pair copper transceivers are so bad as to make it into the crossover point from copper cabling into DAC cables and fibre.
And, honestly, the assumption that "Ethernet = copper cabling" is harmful for 10GE. Those transceivers are hot garbage in the literal sense, they run hot enough to warrant usage limitations on switches due to cooling/overheating limits, and they tend to be quite picky about cable quality on establishing links.
>the post I was replying to was talking about what "devices use" and cables required for that
Yes, that person said "most devices use Ethernet", which you correctly pointed out they meant to say RJ45. However, in the process of making that correction you made an unrelated error yourself in saying that fiber is Ethernet too.
>you can by no means assume copper when talking about an Ethernet port
You can, if by "Ethernet" you mean an RJ45 jack and its cable, which is a fairly common usage of the word. It doesn't matter that it's technically incorrect. The default idea of physical protocol that the word "Ethernet" invokes in most people is that of twisted pair copper cabling. If you take a random person and put in front of them a fiber optic cable carrying Ethernet and a copper cable carrying serial signals and tell them "would you mind unplugging the Ethernet cable?" they'll disconnect the copper cable.
>Your assertion that "everyone will understand" is also something I plainly know to be untrue in my bubble.
Oh, so you know several people who when presented with the dichotomy of Ethernet or fiber (because that's what the comment you replied to was about, as it put Ethernet in contrast with fiber), they'll be completely dumbfounded about what is meant, as if hearing gobbledygook?
Excuse me, I believe you mean GNU/copper/RJ45/base-T
My copper/RJ45/base-T is running musl libc + busybox!
Thank you.
Indeed, that's largely why I decided 10gbit at home isn't really worth it. The current 10gbit ethernet stuff is expensive and power hungry, the enterprise stuff is hard to use on consumer gear. And the only real use case is super fast access to a nas.
I got it solely because our ISP bumped our home fiber to 10Gb and it would’ve hurt my soul for the router to be slower than that. And hey, if you’ve already got a router with 10Gb ports available and ready to go…
> every room
I disagree with that for two reasons. First, my central switch is probably capable of both copper and fiber. Second, how many wired devices do you have spread around your house? Let's say I have an above average number of devices: a router, a NAS, two access points, and three desktops. Router, NAS, and one access point can all be adjacent to the switch and avoid any conversion hassle. The desktops are using fiber so no conversion hassle there. That leaves one copper cable or converter needed for the other access point.
I guess I have rather overestimated what a normal amount of wired devices is based on my own sample size. That or the opposite is happening with you.
My house has a POE doorbell, several POE cameras, 2 TVs that each get a connection to their attached android TV boxes, Wife's office gets a pair of connections, ditto with mine, then you've got the APs for the wireless bits + a few servers in the rack with the networking equipment.
Mind you I know I am on the high side, but I use that as the reference point. I'd figure a normal house would have 4-5 wired connections to my 20ish.
In that situation I'd basically consider the doorbell and cameras as a separate install.
That mainly leaves the TVs, which I would just throw on the wireless but for wiring I'd still say you run it to your central switching spot that handles both copper and fiber.
If you have a fixed computer or NAS, stop making excuses and install a 10G fiber card in it.
If you have a laptop or TV it probably doesn't need 10G.
> If you have a fixed computer or NAS, stop making excuses and install a 10G fiber card in it.
It's hard to justify when Ethernet is catching up. Most new motherboards have a 2.5G port. High-end motherboards have 10G Ethernet ports. SFP cards take space, are ugly, and need directed airflow to stay cool. They are not worth it for a 4x increase in bandwidth at best.
Fibre requires conduit with specific radius bends, making it difficult to route through a house.
You'd be amazed what exists on the market these days. For example, the pre-terminated InvisiLight fiber cabling is 0.6mm in diameter and has a 2.5mm bend radius. I've personally installed this cabling while making many 90 degree (and sharper in some cases) bends without any issues. That makes it easy to hide and trivial to fit right through doorways and other tight spaces too.
Having cabled my apartment with Cat 6 definitely made me prefer fiber, it would have been a breeze instead of pulling thick cables from my office to other rooms. Cat 6 also shouldn’t be bent or you risk it going out of spec, and modern fiber nowadays have bend radius comparable to (or even smaller than) Cat 6.
I see how sloppy some FTTH installs are and they all work fine, and this is for light that travels for long distances.
The only advantage copper has is PoE.
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-invisible-OR-transpar...
I redid everything that matters in my house/homelab with DAC cables for exactly that reason. Order of magnitude difference in watts and heat
Hopefully short-run 10GIGE-T might get cooler with better DSP, but for long runs I think it will remain fibre.
Which dock (brand/model) did you get?
The CalDigit TS5+. It's really nice!
> it's kind of upsetting how hot my Thunderbolt dock gets.
I have seen the same with just usb-c multi-port dongles for macbooks (the ones they give you at work along with the macbooks).
in fairness to the docs/dongles though, they have an incredible amount of features that would have been science-fiction twenty years ago.
So the entire Framework card's casing should have been copper?
If the whole thing were metal, the outer casing would transfer heat to skin too quickly, probably, for safety.
Only getting 95% of the book rated speed? I'm OK, that's still a shitload-and-a-half of speed.
The point was how fussy it was to get that 95% instead of something closer to 75%.
He only gets 4-5Gbps in the other direction.
Unlike "5 Gb/s" USB, which in reality is 4 Gb/s USB, so a 5 Gb/s Ethernet interface cannot reach its maximum speed on a 5 Gb/s USB, the "10 Gb/s" USB is really 10 Gb/s, i.e. the difference between its real speed and 10 Gb/s is small enough to be negligible.
The same is true for 10 Gb/s Ethernet, whose speed is not exactly 10 Gb/s, but the difference from 10 Gb/s is also negligible.
Therefore, you do not need a 20 Gb/s USB to reach the maximum speed with a 10 Gb/s Ethernet interface, a 10 Gb/s USB port is good enough.
The overhead of data framing on USB is slightly higher than on Ethernet, so the maximum throughput on an USB 10 Gb/s Ethernet interface is a little lower than for a PCIe Ethernet NIC, but the difference is small enough to not matter. Usually other factors, like bad device drivers or inefficient programs, can cause much greater variations in Ethernet throughput.
The 9.4 Gb/s throughput obtained in TFA is perfectly reasonable when taking into account the packet overheads, which make impossible to reach 10 Gb/s for user data, regardless of hardware. A 20 Gb/s USB interface could not provide any serious improvement over that.
Before Jeff first talk about this, I got one of those cheap Ethernet adapters (with the new realtek chip) on aliexpress for ~55€. It works really well, but I don't have USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 hardware, so I only get ~4Gbps out of it. But I'm pretty happy to break the 1G barrier, and the adapter will be useful in the future when I get better hardware; and I don't have to go through a 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps step.
I'd rather have TB4 dongle with SFP+, rather than two extra heaters.
10g copper is notoriously power hungry. That’s why 90%+ of my 10g ports are SFPs.
In a way, I kinda don't get the idea of an expansion card for ethernet, rather than just a dongle. Specifically, as in this case, where it sticks out from the side of the chassis.
If I'm on the go, I'll have to take it out of the chassis while it's in my bag so I don't damage it. In that case, it's easier to have a regular USB-C card in that port, and toss a dongle in my bag instead of the expansion card.
If I'm not on the go, I'm at a desk, and I'd still rather plug in a dongle than regularly swap an expansion card.
I'm not saying you'd never want the expansion card, but it feels pretty niche.
A lot of people use their laptop as a desktop replacement and kinda leave it in one spot or only move it between two spots (home desk/office desk) rather than as an actually portable take anywhere use anywhere situation
In that case I'd rather just have one of those big usb hubs that has every port on it. Rather than an adapter designed that it only works on one laptop. Sure in theory you could plug them in to any but the design of it is such that you'd snap the connector if you plugged it in to a normal port.
While a regular usb-c ethernet adapter has a flexible cable between the laptop and the bulky rigid part.
Thunderbolt hubs are rather amazing now; in the past they'd either get super hot and have reliability issues, or had severe bandwidth limitations (especially if using larger displays).
The current crop has been great for my needs — a couple models have 10G Ethernet built in (CalDigit is the one I'm using now), and most now have more than one Thunderbolt port that allows a high speed storage device to be used as well (in addition to a 5K or 4K display or two!).
My TB5 dock from OWC on a M4 Pro MacBook can run dual 4k 240hz displays, 2.5gb ethernet, and several peripherals no problem. It also provides 100W of power. All over a single cable. So good these days
I may have the same one and I love it so much. Plug one USB C-looking cable into my laptop, and two 32” monitors and a host of accessories light up as it starts charging. It’s the greatest docking station ever.
Then dock it - these things have USB4 / TB, may as well get a TS5 and cover all your bases in one wire.
In that case why wouldn't you use a hub/docking station type thing? And again, that configuration still lends itself just fine to a dongle.
I'd also add that at a fixed location/desk, having a dock with ethernet is also very normal.
Anyway it is probably just there to demonstrate the possibilities to consumers. What if a lower profile standard for networking gets popularized?
they had very flat (on one side) Ethernet pigtails in the PCMCIA days.
Those sucked so hard, were extremely finicky to plug in, and I was in constant terror of breaking it. Even the popout jack things were horrific in that respect.
I'm 1000% for wired connections where possible, but for laptops too thin to have one built inside of the frame the best choice is a proper docking station, ideally with a cable that isn't impossible to user replace.
Oh god, bringing back memories I don't want. They were always so fragile.
ix (IEC 61076-3-124)
Isn’t that kind of most things Framework? Sure, a replaceable color bezel is fun, but pretty niche.
I fell out of love with frameworks after buying one for myself and a few employees.
The economics/upgrade math just does not make sense.
Framework feels like a case of giving HN users what they asked for, but not what they actually needed.
Like the constant cries for an iPhone Mini, which subsequently sold terribly, because people like good battery life, a generous screen size, and feature-rich cameras. Apple didn’t learn because they went on to do the Air, but whatever.
The minis, despite being sold at the same time as SEs and having to share demand, did fine. And if you want to improve that situation the obvious answer is to pick one or the other, not to cancel both. If you want even better stats, much more than needed, wait 2-3 years between releases.
My best guess for Apple's actions is that despite there being a very real demand for a smaller phone, they don't think the discomfort is bad enough for people to switch to Android, so they don't even try. A small phone makes a lot of profit, but ignoring the demand also makes a lot of profit.
The Air was a real flop.
I agree, every product should only be as large as possible, have top of the line specs, and a price to match. Literally nobody exists in different market segments. There should only be one product in each category. You will purchase your Phone(tm) and be happy.
I don't get it either.
If it had a hinged or expanding[0] ethernet port so it could sit flush with the chassis when not in use it would make a lot more sense.
[0] It's easier to show what I mean https://www.reddit.com/r/TechnologyPorn/comments/hvlxep/orig...
There’s nothing to “get”. The circuit doesn’t fit inside the slot for expansion cards. You could plug in a dongle instead, but then you’d have a big hole in your laptop with a cable sticking out. Or you could just get a wider laptop bag. They make them in multiple sizes, you know.
> you’d have a big hole in your laptop with a cable sticking out
No, you wouldn't. You'd have one of these instead: https://frame.work/products/usb-c-expansion-card?v=FRACCQ000... (or the one matching a color you prefer and your particular model)
Now you’ve got two things plugged into your laptop, instead of one that sticks out by an inch. :)
Technically all framework 13 laptops always have four things plugged into it because the ports are modular such that the user can choose which ports they want.
Unless you're crazy and leave the expansion ports unpopulated.
Er, no, then you'd use the regular USB-C expansion card and plug the dongle into that, and then the port becomes generally useful.
A wider bag doesn't solve it. The part that sticks out could still easily snag on something. I wouldn't want to take that risk, and I doubt many people would.
I feel like you're arguing just to argue...
Not arguing, just saying that sometimes things come with compromises. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that some expansion cards don't fit in the expansion slot. There’s always going to be _something_ that needs a bit more space.
Having it stick out like that is such a stupid design. Almost as dumb as all the 2FA dongles. The USB-A ones that you could leave in actually made the most sense. Yes I know.
Frankly, considering this is a laptop, I wish they spent more effort on delivering a flush 1gbe module rather than a 10gbe module. It has become an elephant in the room every time someone asks about my framework laptop. It... sticks out like a sore thumb, per say.
As others have commented, this is not a Framework product. That's part of the beauty: they open source there designs, allowing for third parties to easily make things like this (and much more beside). I believe at some point someone in the community was trying to design one of those slim ethernet ports that expands open when you need it (the jack doesn't really fit). Apparently some of the mechanisms for doing so are still proprietary though.
-edit- here it is: https://community.frame.work/t/low-profile-ethernet-expansio...
The article never does resolve WHY it was slow in linux :(
The video mentions that drivers were needed to get the full speed on Windows, and that the Realtek Linux drivers didn't compile on a modern kernel. So it's probably software.
Realtek makes some pretty affordable networking chips but their Linux drivers can be a real gamble. Either it works out of the box or you're in for years of messing around.
> Realtek makes some pretty affordable networking chips but their Linux drivers can be a real gamble. Either it works out of the box or you're in for years of messing around.
And that's when it's a legitimate Realtek chip. Many years ago, I bought a 100M Realtek Ethernet card, expecting it to work out of the box on Linux; but it was actually a counterfeit, using a Silan chip instead of a Realtek chip, and the out-of-tree Linux driver (for Linux 2.4) that came with it on the CD was actually a driver for the Silan chip with the numbers filed off. I ended up writing and submitting a Linux 2.6 driver for it, just to make people stop blaming the Realtek driver for not working with the unrelated Silan chip.
I think most people do not have 10g UTP infrastructure they want to exploit, but many people do have 2 computers they'd like to connect together at high speed, and these people are far better served by just connecting those computers' Thunderbolt ports together. With nothing other than an admittedly pricey cable, you get 10, 20, or 40gbps links depending on the endpoints. That's the "something faster" that will work well for most people.
I have a 10GbE network in my house and a Framework 13 AMD laptop (7840U variant), I found that most of the available 10GbE adapters on the market get too hot, and after trying a few I settled on the UniFi USB4 10GbE adapter as it has enough thermal dissipation to be able to sustain full performance over an extended period of time. I don't see how you can dissipate enough heat in the Framework insert shells.
I'm not sure why you want to either really. I can't see many scenarios where the absolute portability of having a 10GBE adapter in the laptop is really necessary. I suspect the general use of these kind of things is for people docked at a desk, at which point its best served by a well cooled dongle or a chunky dock like a TS5
My use case is definitely while sitting at a desk in my home office where I can directly cable to my 10GbE switch. For other usage, I just stick to WiFi 7, which is usually plenty fast enough for most usage. I prefer connecting wired when doing downloads (Steam, OS upgrades, et al).
Only Framework could reincarnate godawful PCMCIA cards as proprietary USB-C dongles and be praised for it. Insanity. Maybe next they can bring back the XJACK.
No one wants to address the elephant in the room: it's a crap design for proprietary modules. Sure the design is open, can you use them anywhere else? Nope.
You're paying a premium for USB-C dongles that can't be used on any other brand of laptop. Apple is probably upset they didn't think of it first.
Of course you can use the modules on any other brand of laptop. It's not going to look pretty doing it, but I've routinely used the USB-C to USB-A, as well as the mini SSD, on a MacBook Pro.
Colleagues borrow them all the time when they need a SD card or MicroSD card reader. Is it as pretty as a dedicated reader for those cards? No, but it does the job.
Saying they're proprietary is misleading a bit. The form factor makes it awkward to use elsewhere but they work just fine anywhere you plug them into.
Someone's making a usb hub that you can plug expansion cards into, but it's just a kickstarter last time i checked and not a very good price
It is not mechanically fit for purpose.
You can likewise put 26" rims on a Ford Fiesta but it will look and function equally poorly.
Slap on a 4 inch extension cable and it's not meaningfully worse than any other dongle.
I don’t follow - how are modules based on USB-C proprietary?
My Framework ethernet dongle works perfectly fine with a Mac that I use for work, for instance.
I knew someone would ask this.
It is mechanically disagreeable.
The weight/shape of the module will break the USB-C port in short order because it is solely supported by the connector.
For instance, by bumping the spatula hanging off your Mac.
For that matter, USB-C are crap connectors, I don't care how many graphs and BS data you show me stating they're the most reliable connector ever. I do not believe it.
They're the only types of connectors I've seen damaged repeatedly, and the only one with which I've personally experienced damage, and I've been using laptops since before many of you were born.
So you’re saying the modules have a suboptimal design for non-Framework laptops.
Sure. But this does not make them proprietary, they work fine with non-Framework laptops as well.
I'm not getting into a well ackshually argument over this.
Can you slide them into a just-sized mechanical receptacle on a MacBook? On a Dell, HP, etc.
No.
I understand your disdain for fandom but in this case this isn't a product by framework. This is a 3d part product resulting from framework's basic motivation and associated actions of nurturing a 3rd party ecosystem. I don't like fandom but we can admit framework's theoretical raison d'etre is pretty good
Sounds like the dual problem of "I want the thinnest" is the "I want the most powerful" on miniature equipment, and of course you run into an unbalanced situation
Honestly I don't see much of an use for 10Gbps in a notebook that can't be solved by a dongle when you actually need it
Does a laptop really need more than 1Gbps or whatever you can get through WiFi? It's an edge device not a router.
No one needs anything, but can and do I use more than 1Gbps from my laptop? Of course. 1Gbps is only ~125MB/sec transfer speed. When I’m copying large files to and from my home NAS, I often want more speed than that so a while ago I picked up a 2.5g adapter, later 5g, and now finally with these new chips a 10g adapter.
Same for my SFF PC which only came with 2.5g onboard and no extra slots because ITX and can now do 10g via the same USB adapter which is great.
> No one needs anything, but can and do I use more than 1Gbps from my laptop? Of course.
I agree, but laptops are severely power and storage limited. How many >100GB games or whatever can you really download and actually play on a typical laptop? If faster Ethernet increases power consumption, it's probably a negative overall.
Well, it's Framework we are talking about. My plan is to buy it because at some point of its lifecycle my Framework 12 motherboard will be used as a new node in my Homelab. :)
Obviously not. I've got a $300 WQHD monitor that has 1GB/s over USB-C with power delivery. MacBooks have 2GB/s WiFi.
For the niche enthusiast, that dongle is fine.
Every laptop probably doesn’t, some laptops probably do.
Yes, I have 5Gbit symmetric fiber, why would I want to limit myself to less speed than that on my laptop? I regularly peak out my Internet connection while doing Steam downloads and OS updates.
Yours is an “edge device” but I am root, so mine is a portable tool for managing and testing the network that does not have working WiFi access points attached to it or obviously I would not be there.
And yes, some of those links are above 1gbps so that the users can have individual 1gbps links.
More amazed by the complexity in bundling offers, of decking out your Framework device with 6 flush USB-C port extension ports sets you back 60 bucks already.
That's like a weird hidden tax.
In a network world where 1GB Ethernet randomly can handshake at 100Mbit still, getting reliably more than 3/4 of the advertised Bandwith from the Adapter seems quite harmless.
https://frame.work/marketplace/expansion-cards?search=USB-C
No they dont come free in the base config either, you have to pay a minimum of 10 for every slush port.
I like the modularity, but I'd feel better if it came with the "blanks" that just extends the inside USB-C port towards the outside.
I feel like things would not look like nickel-and-diming if those blanks came with the laptop, and they just priced them in the final price. Or even better, offered the option to "upgrade" one or several of those to whatever you need.
I agree, but maybe not all slots need to be filled with blanks, maybe leaving one or two truly empty slots is OK.
Framework’s single greatest marketing triumph is selling a $20 3.5 mm audio jack for a device that doesn’t have one but easily could (Framework 16) and somehow avoiding constant complaints/“so brave”/etc.
Aside from me just now, I guess :p
Looks like it doesn't handle high impedance headphones well either. Oof.