why does usb even exist you can do anything over ethernet and it's better at it

@lucy keyboard and mouse over ethernet

@kura unironically YES

@kura @lucy Cisco wants to know your location

@lucy @kura just use coax for everything

WITH the bayonet connectors

@lucy Don't you need a cable for that?

@Paradox wdym? usb isn't wireless either..

@lucy
Oh, yeah. I have a mouse with a USB plugin but it uses Bluetooth.
Well USB is thinner than ethernet. I've never had a problem with USB, anyway.

But that is an interesting idea.

@Paradox ethernet is easier to implement correctly, the plug being bigger is actually good (more durable) and it allows for much greater transfer rates.

@lucy @Paradox USB does like 40Gbps, you can’t really do that with ethernet

infiniband on the other hand…

@mia @Paradox > usb does like 40Gbps
that did never happen on any usb device ever lmao

@lucy @mia
Apparently she's talking about USB 4.

@Paradox @mia give me my ethernet alternative timeline

@lucy @Paradox one of these days i’m gonna grab some infiniband hardware on ebay and just use that for LAN

@lucy universal serial bitch

@lucy @Paradox then i can just put all the noisy HDDs somewhere they won’t bother me and have a silent desktop PC again

@mia @lucy @Paradox there's 40G internet it just costs a squilliam dollars

i think it should be more common so it doesn't cost as much

@mia @Paradox

@wizard @Paradox @mia there's many great things in this world if you got the money

@lucy @Paradox Does it allow for charging?

@Zergling_man @Paradox yes

@lucy @Paradox I gotta play with this

@Zergling_man @Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet

@lucy @Paradox Alright I'm sold.

@lucy @Paradox usb < 3 is easier to implement than ethernet

@lucy @mia @Paradox i have a usb stick that can prob do over 10gbps at least

@sally @lucy @Paradox Twisted pair is in fact quite hard to crimp if you don't have the kind of connectors that lets the wires protrude out the end and easily be trimmed, or if the connector doesn't mate well with your crimp tool.

Hand crimping is only good up to 1000BASE-T - a hand crimped cable will not work with 10GBASE-T unless you get it absolutely perfect.


USB 2.0 cables can be repaired via soldering (although is often hard due to how thin the wires most usb cables use are), but good luck soldering back together a usb 3.0 or higher cable and having something that does more than 2.0.

@sally @lucy @Paradox
> usb-c
Did they retroactively add that to usb2 now?

@sally @snacks @Paradox @lucy As far as I can tell, 1000BASE-T is easier to implement protocol-wise - although manufacturing the hardware that generates the voltages Ethernet requires and galvanic isolation is harder and therefore is more expensive.

Doing PCIe over a cable is much more cursed really.

@snacks @sally @lucy @Paradox Most USB-C connectors seem to only implement USB 2.0 - many of them can only be powered via a USB-A to USB-C cable, as they don't do the handshake required to receive power over USB-C.

@Suiseiseki @sally @lucy @Paradox that's usb pd, anything over 450ma is out of spec for 2.0 iirc

@Suiseiseki @Paradox @lucy

> Hand crimping is only good up to 1000BASE-T - a hand crimped cable will not work with 10GBASE-T unless you get it absolutely perfect.

It's understandable that the higher the bandwidth the harder it is to hand-crimp cables, but logically speaking you wouldn't need 10G bandwidth transfers to use peripherals as Lucy suggests, you'd be fine with even 10BASE-T bandwidth.

@Suiseiseki @Paradox @lucy @sally nvm,all the charging shot got retroactively added to usb 2. the usb consortium is run by demons

@Suiseiseki @Paradox @lucy

This discussion reminds me I have some exterior 5e ethernet cable laying around that I "retrieved" from a building pending cleanup and crimping, I know what to do with today's spare time.

@snacks @Paradox @mia you're rich normal people don't have that

@snacks @Paradox usb < 3 is slower than ethernet tho usually?

@lucy @Paradox and?

@lucy @Paradox usb c is faster than ethernet so we should use that afterall?

@snacks @Paradox no, usb-c is junky as hell not very durable. ehternet ports are eternal

@lucy @snacks @Paradox retvrn to rs232

@lucy @snacks @Paradox https://www.neutrik.com/en/neutrik/products/data-cables/ethercon-r-cat6-cables

@lucy @Paradox but muh thin smartphones!!!!

@snacks @lucy @Paradox they only need power (wifi does over 1 gbps real throughput) and barrel jacks can do that just fine

@snacks @Paradox they shouldn't be thin imo i wish they made them bigger

@snacks @sally @lucy @Paradox Anything over a handful of mA is out of spec for USB-C without a handshake.

USB 2.0 only requires that a typical port supplies 0.5A@5V±0.5 - ports can supply more.

@snacks @lucy @Paradox USB-C is just a port, which you can do just USB 2.0 over, which is much slower than 1000BASE-T and is half-duplex too.

If USB 3.0 is used, accounting for flow control, packet framing and protocol overhead, <450 MB/s of bandwidth is expected, which is somewhat better than the ~125MiB/s 1000BASE-T does, but in reality dodgy cables and the like can reduce speeds to a ¼ of that - so in practice you can only expect speeds similar to 1000BASE-T (USB 3.0 also can interfere with wireless connections like usb devices and Wi-Fi due to the ridiculously frequencies used - while 1000BASE-T at it's quite low frequency does not).

@mia @lucy @snacks @Paradox Wi-Fi is half duplex, while Ethernet after 100BASE-TX is full-duplex.

The "1Gbit/s" is half duplex and only can occur in perfect conditions with no interference - even the latest proprietary Wi-Fi versions are still half-duplex, although at least they use different frequency bands for each client, meaning that each session is half-duplex, rather than the whole network being full-duplex.

@Suiseiseki @lucy @snacks @Paradox perfect conditions aren’t required for 1.2 gbit/s in my experience. i get that reliably at home, with multiple devices and over 2 floors.

that’s fine enough for mobile stuff i’d say

fwiw ethernet interference is also fairly common in average homes. you get fridge compressors and ground loops. the latter was bad enough at my place i had to get a tenda switch with proper ground to reliably negotiate 1gbps full-duplex and stop one of my machines from crashing/rebooting randomly

@lucy @snacks @Paradox @Suiseiseki worst case a single shitty phone charger in the house will interfere with ethernet. ask someone who’s done on-site customer support for a major ISP and you’ll hear some interesting anecdotes lol

@Suiseiseki @lucy @Paradox everything with a usb-c port has to at least support 3.1 to be in spec afaik

@snacks @lucy @Paradox I don't believe that is the case.

I believe they just need to implement the handshake to be in spec (which can be done with only logic games), but many devices don't.

@mia @lucy @snacks @Paradox Yes, if you pass Ethernet cables near noise sources without using STP, you're in for a bad time.

But you don't get the 1.2 Gbit/second with free software, so it's not fine.

With 1000BASE-T, you get 1000Mbit/second full duplex with free software.

@snacks @Paradox @lucy *a handshake (there are multiple handshakes, with one logic gates one, with the rest being software ones).

@mia @Paradox @lucy @snacks I've run into interference problems with UTP once myself, but the solution was to just move the cable.

The twisted pairs are very good at rejecting noise - you can even cross near a few low-loaded AC cables at a 180° angle without problems.

@Suiseiseki @lucy @snacks @Paradox i’m using s/ftp cables. that won’t protect you from problems originating in your power supply.

@Suiseiseki @lucy @snacks @Paradox you do get 1.2 gbit/s with free software, unless you count the firmware blobs as proprietary—in which case you get wifi with almost no devices, even 54mbps. very few have free firmware blobs (zd1211 is the only one i can think of but i’m not really up to date because i really don’t want to be all that religious about what’s making the magic pixies dance)

@lucy @snacks @Paradox @Suiseiseki and at that point, strictly speaking, you basically don’t get 1gbps ethernet with free software either unless you’re making your own adapter with some fpga nonsense

@lucy @snacks @Paradox @Suiseiseki that fpga? have fun trying to program it with free software

@mia @lucy @snacks @Paradox >you do get 1.2 gbit/s with free software, unless you count the firmware blobs as proprietary
Such Wi-Fi card do *not* use firmware (microprocessor instructions on replaceable ROM chips).

They use proprietary peripheral software, under a proprietary license, that takes the users freedom.

The software just happens to be loaded at runtime from the main processor to a peripheral coprocessor, rather than run on the main processor (which is a technical difference, but not a difference freedom wise - it's just as proprietary for software to be loaded at runtime onto any processor).

If you look at the driver in Linux, more than half of it is missing - the rest of it runs on the Wi-Fi card as a proprietary software derivative work.


Yet another example of how the "firmware" term is incorrectly used to refer to proprietary software to confuse people into thinking it's not software.

>in which case you get wifi with almost no devices, even 54mbps. very few have free firmware blobs
Atheros ath9k Wi-Fi cards offer up to 3x3 802.11n with a fully free driver and no proprietary software - just proprietary hardware.

There is also free peripheral software for the PCIe to usb bridge for ath9k_htc cards (as that bridge needs software to work).

If you're worried about how ath9k cards have a ROM and a microprocessor, you can go with an ath5k card that has no microprocessor if you're okay with 802.11g.


There are also a few other kinds of Wi-Fi cards that work with only free software (a few have free peripheral software as needed).

It would be quite easy to get 802.11ac & 802.11ax etc with free software - if companies just respected the users freedom and didn't infringe copyright by releasing their peripheral software in source form as free software under a license compatible with the GPLv2 (yes, that would need to include signing keys if such hardware is handcuffed).

>strictly speaking, you basically don’t get 1gbps ethernet with free software either unless you’re making your own adapter with some fpga nonsense
There are many 1000BASE-T chipsets available that don't use or need software (just proprietary hardware) that you can use with a fully free software driver.

There are indeed free 1000BASE-T hardware designs available for FGPAs and there is a line of FGPA's that can be programmed with free software - the iCE40 line.

@mia @Paradox @lucy @snacks >I never get a reply.

@Suiseiseki @snacks @Paradox @mia you're insufferable and nobody wants to talk to you

@lucy @snacks @Paradox @Suiseiseki i just leave discussions that turn into hair-splitting exercises

@lucy @snacks @Paradox @mia No U.

I don't see what is so unendurable about a freedom post with useful information.

It's rather intolerable to claim that someone else is detestable for no reason.

@mia @lucy @snacks @Paradox I quite enjoy hair splitting, but I wasn't doing so - it's not hair-splitting to point out that proprietary software is proprietary software.