Hands-On Tech 260: Ethernet vs. USB-C for File Transfers

Coming up on Hands On Tech, let's take a look at different file transfer options and which

you should choose.

Stay tuned.

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Hello and welcome to Hands On Tech, I am Micah Sargent, and today I am taking your tech

questions and answering them because that's what we do on this show, Hands On Tech.

If you have a tech question, by the way, you can get in touch, hotattwit.tv is how you

get in touch with me.

I also love it when you write in with answers that you have to problems that other people

have.

That is always accepted and welcomed as well because occasionally I'll come across something

I've never experienced and have trouble finding it.

But maybe you out there go, oh wait, I dealt with that.

I know exactly what to do.

And I love love love to hear from you in those cases as well.

All right, so today's question comes in from John.

I don't believe this is John Ashley, this is a different John, as far as I know.

And John writes the following, Micah, just curious, should I spend the extra money to get

a 10 gig Ethernet port or find a USB-C to 10 gig Ethernet dongle?

USB-C is much faster, I say like that because it is asked as a question, other than connection

issues, what are the differences?

Do USB-C speeds surpass one gig and 10 gig Ethernet capabilities?

I'm considering upgrading my NAS, but want the fastest connections and transfer speeds.

So should I stick with Thunderbolt or go Ethernet?

Keep up the great work and educating the masses.

Love this by the way, John, that you went on to include some more information where you

say the, where you give me some background.

So you are planning to do video editing, or you do do video editing.

And the way that you kind of store these files is on your network attached storage with

a Thunderbolt 3 connection, 2.5 gig fiber internet service, 8 port, 2.5 gig switch with

one 10 gig port, an Ero60 plus for wireless connectivity.

Your computer is connected via Ethernet to the port on the switch.

The switch is connected to the fiber company port.

There's one on four on the router, and then the Ero is connected to port 2 on the router.

So that is the kind of information we love here on the show.

You give us so much, and that's what's important.

So let's talk about it called the Great Connection Question Thunderbolt versus 10 gig versus

USB-C.

Let's kind of talk about and forgive my math if any of this sounds a little bit off.

The important thing is that we're sort of sorting through what's fast and what's not.

When it comes to gigabit ethernet, that's gigabit, not gigabit ethernet, one GBE as the ethernet

is called, that's about 125 mega bytes per second, or mega bits per second, mega bytes

per second, yes.

That is the transfer speed's theoretical max.

So 125 MB per second, 2.5 gigabit ethernet is about 312 MB per second theoretical max.

10 gigabit ethernet is 1250 MB per second.

So that's 1.25 gigs per second theoretical max.

Those are the ethernet options, right?

So again, 10 gig is giving you transfer speeds of about 1.25 gigabits per second in transfer

speeds, but here's the thing.

We got to look at USB-C.

USB-C, assuming a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, that's 1,250 MB per second, which is on par with

10 gig ethernet, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 by 2, as theoretical speed of 2,500 MB per second, which

is equivalent to double the transfer speed of 10 gig.

I know this is getting into some wild territory here.

Thunderbolt 3, 5000 MB and then Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 5, theoretical max starts at

5,000 MB per second and goes up from there.

So a couple of things to note is that these are theoretical maxes and it depends on so

many other factors, particularly when we're talking about Wi-Fi or ethernet, but those direct

connections over USB-C can be faster depending on the generation of the USB-C.

So to direct-lance your question, yes, USB-C can surpass one gig and even match 10 gig

depending on the USB-C standard, but USB-C, as you know, is just the connector shape.

So the speed is going to depend entirely on the protocol that's running over it.

It could be that the connector shape and the cable is able to do USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 times

2.

But if everything else or anything else in that chain is not able to do that, then it's

only going to go to whatever theoretical max it can actually hit.

So a USB-C to 10 gig dongle is still limited to 10 gig speeds because the bottleneck actually

becomes the ethernet protocol in that case, not the USB-C interface.

So if the USB-C side of things is technically able to support that 2500 megabits per second,

or excuse me, megabits per second, it's still capped at the 10 gig ethernet because that's

as fast as it can go.

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So given that you've got Thunderbolt 3, you're already working at the fastest that it seems

like according to your setup you have.

With Thunderbolt 3, that's roughly four times faster than 10 gig.

So with video editing, this direct connection to your network attached storage is hard

to beat unless for some reason you need to be farther away.

In which case then, you may have to make a sacrifice essentially for those better speeds

to be able to be farther away or move about the house as you need to.

So that's Thunderbolt 3, 10 gig.

This is the sweet spot if we're talking network storage, right?

If you do want your network attached storage accessible to multiple machines on your network,

then that Thunderbolt 3 is not going to work, right?

It's not the same.

10 gig is going to be the way to go.

But again, it's still only a quarter of your Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth.

So you're going to be taking a huge step down in doing that.

So when you see a Thunderbolt 2 10 gig adapter, it's still limited by the speeds that 10 gig

is able to provide.

And so that's something that you really need to bear in mind.

And when it comes to USB-C to 10 gig, it's possible that you're getting even more opportunity

for a failure, depending, not failure, but a drop in speeds, depending upon what version

of USB-C it is versus Thunderbolt.

So it'll work, but you're introducing another point of failure, adding latency instead

of using a native 10 gig port.

So USB-C dongles also have issues.

There was an episode of hands-on tech recently where someone was having an issue with a webcam

working between two devices because of a USB-C dongle switch that was in the midst of things.

Driver issues and power delivery.

And then some of them not being able to keep up with the speeds over sustained loads.

All of that could mean that this USB-C to 10 gig dongle is not your best bet because you're

doing video editing, which means you need that sustained connection.

So what should you actually do?

I think that Thunderbolt 3, as your primary means of NAS interfacing, is really smart for

active video editing.

If you are editing from your network attached storage as opposed to pulling files from

there to your local machine, if you're editing files from your network attached storage,

nothing else in your setup is going to come close to that bandwidth.

And for timeline scrubbing and working with large video files, you need to have every

single bit of that speed.

If you do want network-wide network attached storage access so that other machines in your

house can pull from those files or as a redundancy, adding 10 gig does make a lot of sense.

If you're going to do that, honestly a native 10 gig or a built-in 10 gig port is going

to be so much better over a USB or Thunderbolt dongle, reliability, sustained throughput being

the most important thing, lower CPU overhead, that dongle will work.

But whenever we're talking about editing, you need rock solid stability.

When it comes to this switch, you did mention that you have 1 10 gig port on your 8 port 2.5

gig switch.

It's a good start because you could connect your NAS to that 10 gig port and your computer

to one of the 2.5 gig ports for network access.

But if both your NAS and your computer had 10 gig, you'd obviously want to switch that supports

10 gig on at least 2 ports or you want to do a direct 10 gig connection between them.

So for your use case, video editing with network attached storage, Thunderbolt 3 is so much

better than what you're getting elsewhere for that direct connection.

That said, 10 gig.

It's a great compliment for network flexibility, but don't use it as a replacement for your

Thunderbolt connection for the USB-C dongle, go native, if you're going to make that investment,

go native, go native, go native, go native.

Those are my suggestions on getting the best possible connection that you can between

your network attached storage, which I know you want to have act as network attached

storage, but just in this case, it's just not the best option for you.

But for other computers on your network, fine, because they don't need to have the level

of connection, right, that you do with the network attached storage in order to access these

files properly and use them.

I know that there was a lot, that was a huge data dump, John, but I needed you, wanted

you, and everyone else to understand the difference between, because for a while, there was this

idea, and I mean, it was the case for a while, that you could get a better, faster connection

over Ethernet than you could with USB, and yeah, that used to be the case.

Modern means of direct connection are so much faster at this point, and love, you know,

these other options that are out there, if you need them, but it sounds like you don't need them.

And so go on the Thunderbolt route, it's just the best thing you can do.

John, thank you for writing in, and thank you all for tuning in to this week's episode of Hands

on Tech. I will be back next month with another episode, but until then, it is time to say goodbye.

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