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  • GreenReaper - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Notably it is no just "USB Type-A" but "USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A" (by which they presumably mean "USB 3.2 Gen 1×1" aka "USB 3.1 Gen 1" aka "USB 3.0"), since that allows 5Gbps nominal, 4Gbps theoretical data (given the 8/10 encoding for error correction), or ~3.2Gbps realistic transfer in both directions - enough for 2.5Gbps but not 5Gbps Ethernet.
  • valinor89 - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Usb naming scheme keeps getting "better and better"... if you define "better" as more confusing. This might be a tradition that began with the Full speed vs High speed fiasco in the olden days when windows would nag at you that the USB device might not run fast enought because it was connected to a Full speed port.
  • Valantar - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Hm. Reasonably interested in this, if they're cheap enough. Ought to be, given that 10GbE cards are $90. Now if there only were >1GbE switches in existence with more than two ports and sensible prices...
  • jeremyshaw - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Now you have made me wonder if any common router/switches can use USB ethernet dongles.
  • eek2121 - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    The router situation is pretty dire, I would construct my own if you could get a Cable modem with faster than gigabit speeds. Right now I have a 10G NIC thanks to flaky onboard that would downgrade to 100 mbit randomly, and that costed $100. I looked around for routers or switches to start converting my network over, but none could be found for a reasonable price. Looks like we are still looking at $50-100 per port, despite the downgrade in speeds.
  • PixyMisa - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    MicroTik have an 8 port 10GbE switch for $270. But it's SFP+.

    They've announced new 10Gbase-T switches but no pricing yet that I've seen.
  • Valantar - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Yeah, SFP+ means ridiculously expensive cabling that can't be terminated with consumer tools and isn't easily available. NICs are more expensive too. Not an option.
  • oRAirwolf - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link

    I just bought this switch and it was delivered today. I got 8 new Avago SFP+ fiber transceivers for $5 each on eBay, three 2 meter armored OM4 LC OFNP multimode fiber cables from fs.com for $7.61 each, and a 15 meter cable of the same specs for $26.98 from fs.com. Are they more expensive than Cat6A from Monoprice? Yes. Are they ridiculously expensive? Not even a little bit.

    I also got three Mellanox ConnectX-3 EN dual-port 10GbE SFP+ PCIe 3.0 NICs for $26 each. You can buy 4 of those for the same price as one Aquantia AQC107 10Gbe NIC. I have no idea where you but your parts from, but you are 100% incorrect about the cost of running an SFP+ 10Gbe LAN. It is a hell of a lot cheaper than a 10GBASET RJ-45 LAN.
  • abufrejoval - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link

    I concur, when you look closely (and now what to look for), you can get slightly outdated gear for rather good prices, because datacenters have long since moved on to much higher capacities.

    Also you may be able to make do without transreceivers if you just want to string a couple of machines together, that are standing next to each other using direct connect copper cables that are much cheaper (and use less power).

    I am doing that with ConnectX-5 VPI NICs at 100Gbit/s using host chaining instead of a switch with three machines so far.
  • Vatharian - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link

    For the third of a cost of single CX-5 I've built 8-port "switch" with off the shelf PC and 4 dual port CX-2s, simple bridge did the rest.

    The problem is 'knowing what to look for'. Infiniband is relatively easy on copper side, but going fiber is confusing as hell. I can't imagine Joe Average researching that, and I've seen effects of wrong choices (guy bough CX-3 and QSFP DACs, another ended up with QLogic SAS expander and 100m of QSFP 40 -> 4x10 breakout cables).
  • Vatharian - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link

    I think the main thing about fiber is that it's too confusing for normal consumer.

    You clearly know what you've been searching for, knew about fs.com (in point: cheapest place to get DACs and fiber), and most of all - you're probably going to just throw the fibers over the floor.

    From average Joe's perspective if you search for fiber cables you're being presented with offers in hundreds of dollars for few meters cables. Mr Joe Average won't know the difference between QSFP, SFP, SFP+ and external SFF8087, and is likely to end up with a stack of unusable hardware and regret of his venture (actually I met two such Joes). I get it that some people think that dropping Cat 6A cable in place of Cat5 into 1G network will magically upgrade it to 10G, but without proper research it's basically impossible to shoot for adapting SFP+ at home. On a side note, Mellanox is unknown to average consumer, so another thing to 'just know'.

    Valantar has a point: it's impossible to actually cut and terminate fiber at home. You can trim BaseT wherever you want, and put it in the wall. You simply cannot snap pair of pigtails to off-the-roll fiber with $4 Walmart cable crimping tool. I'm remodeling my apartment now and I WILL drop fiber in the wall, but I have a friend who can borrow proper equipment from his work - local telco.
  • cpwrunner - Thursday, March 28, 2019 - link

    I just did a home renovation, and yes terminating fiber is expensive, but I had my contractors run terminated fiber along with the unterminated stuff as well as cat5e. I believe it was OM3 Multimode LC terminated fiber. Available from FS.com or even from amazon. Spools of unterminated fiber can be obtained in less than 3 days, though I do not actually know how well it works because fortunately I have not had to use it yet. The terminated fiber got scratched up a bit, but guess what, it totally worked and the terminated fiber is highly available and cheap. I am sure that in 5 years time some mouse in the wall will chew threw it or something, but at least with three cables in the walls per outlet I should be fine for 20 years at least. I have one of the netgear nbase-t switches with 1 sfp+ port and 10 RJ45s. For the first few months the networking actually stunk, but that was because there was an extra switch in the setup which was causing a loop, but once I removed the extra piece of networking equipment, the setup became rock solid. My wife can have a remote desktop citrix session into her office open for days at a time without a disconnection. Before removing the redundant piece of equipment she could not last more than an hour.
  • Vatharian - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link

    10G is mainly reserved for enterprise hardware, and nothing's gonna change anytime soon, until there is actual incentive for businesses to upgrade FROM 10G. 400G introduction and 25/40G getting cheaper might push it, but just barely.
    I've built 10G 'switch' by dropping four $15 Mellanox dual port SFP+ cards into cheapo motherboard with Core i3 I got off eBay. Total cost: $160. I won't claim it performs on par with actual switch (hence quotes), because it doesn't but it's totally cheaper, and enough for home networking and homelabbing to some degree.

    Honestly premium over 1GbE is ridiculous in comparison to 100 Mbps/1Gbps transition.

    On top of that we are being fed artificial 2/2.5/5Gbps standard which is exactly as expensive as full 10G (or more), has zero support in Enterprise world, and honestly has same relevance to real world as if mobile equipment manufacturers introduced update for EDGE standard today to make it twice as fast.
  • abufrejoval - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link

    Buffalo sells NBase-T 8 and 12 port switches that use Aquantia chipsets inside (3x4 or 2x4). I've been using a 12 port for about a year now as my home-lab backbone. At less than $100/port they are slightly cheaper than the corresponding Aquantia 10Gbit NICs, which I consider rather reasonable.

    I had to do a bit of hacking to make it as quiet as the workstations: Unfortunately 10GBase-T can use significant PHY power and at 12 ports that sums up to around 40 Watts peak they need to design for, even if Green Ethernet is enabled all around for much lower average consumption.

    Nothing 50 additional bucks for a bigger chassis and a quieter fan couldn't fix, but that market must be even more niche, which is why I hacked Noctua fans into the chassis.
  • a351must2 - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - link

    heh, "a bit of hacking" ... I have an 8-port Buffalo that I cut a 4.5" hole in the top and mounted a externally powered 120mm fan on it. Fans that came with it drove me nuts in minutes.
  • sorten - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Not sure where or when I would need such a product. Through (almost) no fault of my own, I have worked for 3 tech companies over the past 18 months and none of them even had 1GbE networks. I guess if you're working as a content creator and need to get massive files across the network this would be useful. For home and average work this is of little use.
  • flyingpants265 - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Gigabit is essential if you have a home server, or transfer files to and from other computers. Unless you want a single blu-ray or game file transfer to take 34 minutes. No need to transfer over USB sticks like an ape. Also, I used to have mysterious problems getting the 12MB/s out of my 100mbit network, gigabit helps. A gigabit switch is $17. It should have been standard on routers a long time ago.
  • rtho782 - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    The issue with this is that there is no such thing as a 2.5g switch.

    If I'm going to buy a 10G switch I might as well use 10G nics given that it's the switch that is the expensive bit.

    I could achieve 2G with teaming if I could be bothered to run another cable between my main switch and my server switch.
  • azazel1024 - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Netgear and a few others have a couple of offerings that have mixed port setups. I forget all of the options out there, but IIRC Netgear has a switch that has two 5GbE ports, 4 2.5GbE ports and 4 GbE ports. IMHO that would be my minimum as a core switch.

    It would allow me to do 5GbE between my desktop and my server. It would then allow me to connect up my router and an access point at 2.5GbE and leave me with a pair of 2.5GbE for other stuff. Like connecting to a secondary switch or something where most of the other stuff is hooked up in my house.

    I am moving shortly, but my current house is running GbE only stuff. But I have roughly 23 ports throughout my house. Some of that is because I have dual drops for LAG/SMB multichannel in a couple of rooms. 2.5/5GbE would allow me to not need LAG/SMB multichannel. Which doesn't mean I wouldn't still put in a couple of drops in some locations in my next house just for a bit of future proofing.

    Anyway, it looks like stuff is FINALLY starting to move to 2.5/5GbE. A couple of wireless routers finally have support for 2.5GbE. And it'll be needed for best case scenarios with the new 802.11ax gear. Not much in the way of clients running 3:3 802.11ac. However, I've tested newer Intel 2:2 chipsets and under fairly optimal conditions I can push ~80MB/sec same room performance. Theoretical limit with encoding is around 85MB/sec for 80MHz 802.11ac 2:2.

    With 802.11ax increasing encoding rate and more likely to actually find gear that can do 160MHz, you are looking at more like a theoretical maximum of about 200MB/sec for 160MHz 802.11ax 2:2.

    I am sure it'll be a long time before anyone sees that. However, in MU:MIMO networks and clients it isn't unreasonable, even with 802.11ac 80MHz that you might see some edge cases where clients are demanding +/- 120MB/sec, which is right at the limit of 1GbE.

    I doubt I'll actually NEED 2.5GbE on an AP/wifi router any day soon. But it would be nice to have the ability and as 802.11ax routers/APs and clients started rolling out in earnest there will be a lot more use cases where the wired backbone is going to be the limitation if it is only 1GbE.
  • abufrejoval - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link

    Teaming doesn't increase point-to-point bandwidth unless you have the software to set up and sustain multiple connections as well as the proper NIC, switch and driver support.

    I've tried and learned the hard way. Should have simply thought it through, but there you go...

    Now there may be switch-to-switch trunking protocols which actually spread packets across lines, but that's switch software stuff that is likely proprietary.

    I've given up on digging deeper now that actually reaching 10Gbit on the connected machines is the bigger challenge, at least in the home lab.

    In the datacenter I have much less trouble filling 100Gbit pipes.
  • sorten - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    @npz : Yes, I was serious.

    @flyingpants : I see. I wondered if a file / media server would be the home use case. I guess that assumes you've got the right cables in your walls. I've never needed to transfer games or movies around my home network, so I guess I'm good :)
  • azazel1024 - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Yup. If all you are doing is connecting up your desktop or laptop wirelessly to your router and out to the internet, no need for it. 90% of home users have no need for it. Most of the people who have wired networks at home, probably do have use cases for this. Most of my friends just have a handful of computers all wirelessly connected to their home router. I have a couple of family and friends though who have wired networks and every one that does has some kind of NAS or home server (lite, usually). And all of them would probably see some benefit to at least having 2.5GbE. Even if it wouldn't be much benefit.

    Me personally, there are times I am transferring 50+ GB of files from my desktop to my server or back, doing back-ups, re-transcode of a bunch of videos, etc. My HDD can't really support 5GbE, but since it is a RAID 0 array (mirrored on my server and an offline backup) in both machines, dual 1GbE is a limitation on my transfer performance. By a fair amount. I could probably even saturate a 2.5GbE link (though barely with my current setup).

    Not often, but about once a year I manage to find someway to completely bork my server or my desktop and I have to pull everything back over from one machine to the other. When you are transferring 3.5TB of files, the difference between ~230MB/sec and ~300MB/sec is a pretty big difference (about 45 minutes of time savings in fact).

    In a couple of years if SSDs keep coming down in price, I'll possibly invest in those for bulk storage (because my storage needs aren't tiny, but they aren't massive. Right now only about 3.5TB of needs. 5-6TB of disk space would be fine). Then I could seriously leverage a 5GbE link and I'd be down to around 40% of the transfer times I have to live with today.
  • Bp_968 - Sunday, May 26, 2019 - link

    I know this is an older comment but i just wanted to point out that the intel 660p 2TB is down to 180$ now. You could get 6TB of NVMe level storage for 540$ now. How crazy is that?! Even with the slower QLC based nand you would still need at least 20Gb infiniband or ethernet to not be limited by the network link!

    A bottom of the barrel 6TB drive is roughly 100$ right now and a good reliable one 150-175$. I honestly didn't expect SSDs to reach this level this quick. For 90% of uses cases at this point i think SSDs the best choice. I'd only consider HDDs for bulk storage thats mostly offline (photos, file storage, backups, etc) or for write heavy applications (I keep a spare 1TB hdd in my gaming machine for nvidia Shadowplay since it writes constantly to enable instant replay recordings. It will burn up writes on a SSD pretty quick if you do something silly like leave a game running for a few days by accident).
  • PeachNCream - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Our facility is still running at 100 mbps and it belongs to a Fortune 500 information technology and telecommunications corporation. In my home network, I have yet to use a local router that even has 1GbE ports. Everything is 100mbit so far which is not a concern for me since I also have no reason to shuffle large files around my internal network. Backups go from my laptops to a 1TB external hard drive over USB 2.0 or I use said laptop as an intermediate device between my phone and said external hard drive for occasional backups.
  • eek2121 - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Seriously? I've been running Gigabit for over a decade. It's pretty common in most home networks these days.
  • fred666 - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Probably not worth the effort, the pain of using dongles, and the cost to upgrade cheap gigabit hardware to this for only 2.5x the speed. 10 Gbps would make more sense. Even if the USB isn't fast enough. Just like they made USB2.0 gigE dongles.
  • mjz_5 - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    2.5 faster is a lot. What if a cpu is 2.5 faster?
  • CharonPDX - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    But why? 2.5 GbE, 5 GbE, and 10 GbE all run over the same cabling, and modern switches don't slow down other devices on the network if there's one "slow one." (Yes, you can plug a 10 *Megabit* Ethernet in to your modern switch, and it won't slow things down.)

    For systems that either don't have available PCIe slots, this is a great solution. Especially for wired Ethernet missing laptops. It's not a "pain", it's plugging in one cable. It just happens to be a USB rather than an Ethernet. (With the Ethernet connected further down the chain.)

    Sure, 10 GbE would be a "better" upgrade, but this will undoubtedly be cheaper.
  • BedfordTim - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    USB3.whatever isn't fast enough to support 10GbE.
  • close - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Because they'd have to put a more expensive 10G controller but never be able to deliver that speed. So they can't pass on the cost to the end user.
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    In 1998, I was connecting 2.5Gb/s waves across the Atlantic, and not many per fiber pair either. Token ring was still around, 10Base2 still being deployed in the network management side of it all.

    Today, my laptop has 2.5G & Desktop 10G in the home.

    Next week its off to Asia for a 400Gb/s wave 'line-up'.

    Rumours of 600Gb/s & 800Gb/s waves abound.

    Even I'm surprised.
  • CharonPDX - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    This would be great for my home server. It does media serving duties in addition to other server duties, and there are times (when both TVs and another computer/phone or two are streaming from it,) that it saturates its 1 GbE connection.

    I just got a router that has one 2.5 GbE port, so definitely picking one of these up to connect to the server! (Of note: It's an older iMac with a fast SSD and a large spinning internal drive, plus a Thunderbolt drive array. It is usually used headless, using Apple's "Target Display Mode" to act as an extra display for my laptop rather than displaying its own screen. Its TB ports are full with the array and laptop connection, so a USB 2.5 GbE would be great.)
  • damianrobertjones - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    "add 2.5 Gbps wired Ethernet to PCs without internal GbE controllers"

    But what if you already have a 1GbE port? Will I not be allowed to buy this? Will my computer explode?
  • damianrobertjones - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    " Club 3D’s new adapters can be used to upgrade older desktop PCs that need a faster Ethernet connectivity."

    Phew.
  • katsetus - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Includes installation CD
    Driver Software installation is required
    No Driver downloads found

    why is china like this
  • Valantar - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    ... because the product isn't launched yet and drivers will be available over Windows Update, from Realtek, and likely from Club3D once the dongles actually launch?
  • abufrejoval - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link

    So where are the Aquantia based USB 3 dongles hiding? The chips seem to have been available for a long time but USB adapters are nowhere to be found.

    I like to upgrade from a USB 3 1GBit Ethernet adapter which I use frequently enough and a 12 Port NBase-T switch from Buffalo as backbone in the home lab so I'd rather spend a few bucks extra for something capable of 5Gbit, even if currently I only have one gaming laptop capable of sustaining that speed that cannot be upgraded with a PCIe NIC.

    Yes, most of the time you don't need that speed, but I've needed it often enough to keep looking and since it's external you can stick it where and when you need it.
  • awonglk - Sunday, May 5, 2019 - link

    Does anyone know an online retailer that has started to sell this? It's not May 2019, but i can't seem to find any online stores that actually sell this yet (e.g. Amazon / Newegg)
  • abufrejoval - Thursday, July 25, 2019 - link

    Selling now!

    Just ordered 3 from Mindfactory with type A connector to use on a test systems cluster for a storage and east-west while the on-board Gbit will be used for north-south traffic. They are a pretty good match for the 100% silent Atom J5005s I'm using there (don't know if they could sustain the 5Gbit the SSDs behind can deliver, but 10Gbit fails because no I/O is bigger than single lane PCIe 2 on Atoms).

    It's pumping 300MB/s on a USB-C variant I got from DeLock, but that one requires extra active adapter for USB-C to USB-A. This is the first with a variant that plugs into the more common USB-A that I have seen and it seems, smaller and cheaper (€37 with VAT) as well.

    Pretty sure it's RealTek, too. For some reason the Aquantia USB chips never materialized in products or at these price levels.

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