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another insane thing is having 40 Gbps USB ports used as a networking cable between two PCs... Why there is still no project which can do this by simply install

another insane thing is having 40 Gbps USB ports used as a networking cable between two PCs... Why there is still no project which can do this by simply installing trivial driver (in windows) and 4 line patch to enable this in linux? just charge 2 dollars per year and youll be milionaire (until LTT / MS catches up and steals it from you ) It is even possible to have linux machine act as a display port sink to be used as a capture card, for streamers, youtubers,... with 0 dollar investment, 0 hardware...

amelius 2y ago
USB isn't very reliable in my experience. It could work if you add your own error correction on top.
- Calwestjobs 2y ago
  You can deal with that on another OSI Models layer. Just encapsulate/transfer something which already has FEC. not sure if wireguard has fec
  - wildzzz 2y ago
    You want your FEC at the lowest level possible in the OSI model so errors are detected early in the stack and you resend as few packets as possible.
taskforcegemini 2y ago
LTT?
- Calwestjobs 2y ago
  youtuber which spreads marketing misiinformation and laugh into your face on live stream while doing it.
poincaredisk 2y ago
>Why there is still no project which can do this >just charge 2 dollars per year and youll be milionaire I don't know, why don't you do it? Sounds like easy money.
- Calwestjobs 1y ago
  there is not enough people to do stuff, in any profession.
wildzzz 2y ago
It is somewhat possible but there's rumors that Intel intentionally nerfs the speed so as not to compete with their datacenter products. It could also just be some other resource limit in the hardware, you usually aren't saturating a thunderbolt connection with just one type of data stream. This guy built a small ring topology network using mini PCs and thunderbolt 4. https://fangpenlin.com/posts/2024/01/14/high-speed-usb4-mesh-network/ https://fangpenlin.com/posts/2024/01/14/high-speed-usb4-mesh... The distance isn't great for USB/Thunderbolt 4 cables so it would really only make sense for cluster computing and since no switches exist for this kind of thing, you're limited in network topology. Generally, the kind of PCs that you'd need a fat pipe connected to already have the slots and lanes available for 40G or 100G cards. It's a cool experiment for the homelab but it's clear the industry isn't interested.
- Calwestjobs 1y ago
  im not sure about intel limiting. a lot of times people forget to calculate encoding and/or packet headers into raw speeds. or something like that. or in that article it is possible usb4 controller is sharing bandwidth with some other device or it is only 20gbps PER controller and he has connected 2 cables to same computer in middle. so 10 IN + 10 OUT is 20gbps ? maybe if he tries to measure speeds for only neighboring machines it would be 20gbps ? but his speed is 11.8 so does not make sense either. i do not know. i was thinking for home use, when i come home with notebook i can quickly sync it to nas. both have NVME drives so 3-4 GBps should be possible. especially video. also not needing wifi, because im connected thru same cable im charging is awesome. also recovery/ssd cloning is nicer on quick connection. virtual machines can stay on nas too with those speeds. no need to copy.
mystified5016 2y ago
There have been many such attempts, but none ever really took off. I think the core problem is that "transferring bulk data directly between two computers" is not a problem that many people actually have. At least, not in a way that isn't solved by other means like an intermediate USB drive or simply waiting for your conventional network to do it. In reality, what you propose can be done with zero software: simply put two USB network adapters back to back inside your cable. That's traditionally how this has been done. If you want a raw USB connection, one device must support USB device mode, which is extremely rare on PCs. I don't know if you can fix this in userland, or even the kernel. My bet is that this is a hardware/firmware level feature, though I don't know for sure.
- Calwestjobs 1y ago
  i was thinking about something like using NAS to USB dock my notebook / tablet. power delivery (even thru some kind of splitter) + 20/40gbps network for syncing AND internet (wifi is constantly down rating connection which does annoying delays, latencies, i live in high rise...)
wolrah 2y ago
> Why there is still no project which can do this by simply installing trivial driver (in windows) The driver has been built in to Windows for years, as it's the same tech as Thunderbolt networking. Just plug two Thunderbolt or USB4 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/component-guidelines/usb4-interdomain-connections https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/co... > and 4 line patch to enable this in linux? Supported since kernel 4.15 in early 2018. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.15/admin-guide/thunderbolt.html#networking-over-thunderbolt-cable https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.15/admin-guide/thunderbol... > It is even possible to have linux machine act as a display port sink to be used as a capture card, for streamers, youtubers,... with 0 dollar investment, 0 hardware... This is not true. When a USB-C connection is being used in DisplayPort Alternate Mode two or four of the high-speed pairs in the cable are literally switched from being connected to the USB controller to being connected to the DisplayPort controller. Both the source and sink devices have to support the same alternate modes to operate, so you would still need to have actual DisplayPort sink hardware to capture a DP-on-USBC signal. DisplayPort capture hardware is rare on its own compared to HDMI capture, I don't think there's a single one out there that takes a USB-C DP Alt Mode input because there's no real reason to ever do that.
- Calwestjobs 2y ago
  win & linux - great ! Thank you. unfortunately not a lot of AMD systems with USB4 hw :/ display port sink - ah ok i thought it is some sort of tunneling. but it is just mux/switch + retimer. so only one way.
  - wolrah 1y ago
    And for what it's worth, Macs have had this ability for basically as long as they've had Thunderbolt. The same can also be done over Firewire on all major platforms, but these days 400/800mbps just isn't what it was back in the day. edit: Also meant to mention that while Thunderbolt has always been rare on AMD due to its requirement of an Intel chip, USB4 is somewhat common nowadays as it's officially supported on the Zen 3+ and newer CPUs

amelius 2y ago

USB isn't very reliable in my experience. It could work if you add your own error correction on top.

Calwestjobs 2y ago
You can deal with that on another OSI Models layer. Just encapsulate/transfer something which already has FEC. not sure if wireguard has fec
- wildzzz 2y ago
  You want your FEC at the lowest level possible in the OSI model so errors are detected early in the stack and you resend as few packets as possible.

taskforcegemini 2y ago

LTT?

Calwestjobs 2y ago
youtuber which spreads marketing misiinformation and laugh into your face on live stream while doing it.

poincaredisk 2y ago

>Why there is still no project which can do this >just charge 2 dollars per year and youll be milionaire I don't know, why don't you do it? Sounds like easy money.

Calwestjobs 1y ago
there is not enough people to do stuff, in any profession.

wildzzz 2y ago

It is somewhat possible but there's rumors that Intel intentionally nerfs the speed so as not to compete with their datacenter products. It could also just be some other resource limit in the hardware, you usually aren't saturating a thunderbolt connection with just one type of data stream. This guy built a small ring topology network using mini PCs and thunderbolt 4. https://fangpenlin.com/posts/2024/01/14/high-speed-usb4-mesh-network/ https://fangpenlin.com/posts/2024/01/14/high-speed-usb4-mesh... The distance isn't great for USB/Thunderbolt 4 cables so it would really only make sense for cluster computing and since no switches exist for this kind of thing, you're limited in network topology. Generally, the kind of PCs that you'd need a fat pipe connected to already have the slots and lanes available for 40G or 100G cards. It's a cool experiment for the homelab but it's clear the industry isn't interested.

Calwestjobs 1y ago
im not sure about intel limiting. a lot of times people forget to calculate encoding and/or packet headers into raw speeds. or something like that. or in that article it is possible usb4 controller is sharing bandwidth with some other device or it is only 20gbps PER controller and he has connected 2 cables to same computer in middle. so 10 IN + 10 OUT is 20gbps ? maybe if he tries to measure speeds for only neighboring machines it would be 20gbps ? but his speed is 11.8 so does not make sense either. i do not know. i was thinking for home use, when i come home with notebook i can quickly sync it to nas. both have NVME drives so 3-4 GBps should be possible. especially video. also not needing wifi, because im connected thru same cable im charging is awesome. also recovery/ssd cloning is nicer on quick connection. virtual machines can stay on nas too with those speeds. no need to copy.

mystified5016 2y ago

There have been many such attempts, but none ever really took off. I think the core problem is that "transferring bulk data directly between two computers" is not a problem that many people actually have. At least, not in a way that isn't solved by other means like an intermediate USB drive or simply waiting for your conventional network to do it. In reality, what you propose can be done with zero software: simply put two USB network adapters back to back inside your cable. That's traditionally how this has been done. If you want a raw USB connection, one device must support USB device mode, which is extremely rare on PCs. I don't know if you can fix this in userland, or even the kernel. My bet is that this is a hardware/firmware level feature, though I don't know for sure.

Calwestjobs 1y ago
i was thinking about something like using NAS to USB dock my notebook / tablet. power delivery (even thru some kind of splitter) + 20/40gbps network for syncing AND internet (wifi is constantly down rating connection which does annoying delays, latencies, i live in high rise...)

wolrah 2y ago

> Why there is still no project which can do this by simply installing trivial driver (in windows) The driver has been built in to Windows for years, as it's the same tech as Thunderbolt networking. Just plug two Thunderbolt or USB4 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/component-guidelines/usb4-interdomain-connections https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/co... > and 4 line patch to enable this in linux? Supported since kernel 4.15 in early 2018. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.15/admin-guide/thunderbolt.html#networking-over-thunderbolt-cable https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.15/admin-guide/thunderbol... > It is even possible to have linux machine act as a display port sink to be used as a capture card, for streamers, youtubers,... with 0 dollar investment, 0 hardware... This is not true. When a USB-C connection is being used in DisplayPort Alternate Mode two or four of the high-speed pairs in the cable are literally switched from being connected to the USB controller to being connected to the DisplayPort controller. Both the source and sink devices have to support the same alternate modes to operate, so you would still need to have actual DisplayPort sink hardware to capture a DP-on-USBC signal. DisplayPort capture hardware is rare on its own compared to HDMI capture, I don't think there's a single one out there that takes a USB-C DP Alt Mode input because there's no real reason to ever do that.

Calwestjobs 2y ago
win & linux - great ! Thank you. unfortunately not a lot of AMD systems with USB4 hw :/ display port sink - ah ok i thought it is some sort of tunneling. but it is just mux/switch + retimer. so only one way.
- wolrah 1y ago
  And for what it's worth, Macs have had this ability for basically as long as they've had Thunderbolt. The same can also be done over Firewire on all major platforms, but these days 400/800mbps just isn't what it was back in the day. edit: Also meant to mention that while Thunderbolt has always been rare on AMD due to its requirement of an Intel chip, USB4 is somewhat common nowadays as it's officially supported on the Zen 3+ and newer CPUs