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Framework's 10G Ethernet module exposes USB-C's complexity
- kelnos 3mo agoIn 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.
- NewJazz 3mo agoI'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?
- RiverCrochet 3mo agothey had very flat (on one side) Ethernet pigtails in the PCMCIA days.
- mjevans 3mo agoThose 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.
- kelnos 3mo agoOh god, bringing back memories I don't want. They were always so fragile.
- kps 3mo agoix (IEC 61076-3-124)
- getcrunk 3mo agoA 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
- Gigachad 3mo agoIn 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.
- geerlingguy 3mo agoThunderbolt 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!).
- californical 3mo agoMy 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
- kstrauser 3mo agoI 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.
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- alex43578 3mo agoIsn’t that kind of most things Framework? Sure, a replaceable color bezel is fun, but pretty niche.
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo agoI fell out of love with frameworks after buying one for myself and a few employees. The economics/upgrade math just does not make sense.
- Gigachad 3mo agoFramework feels like a case of giving HN users what they asked for, but not what they actually needed.
- alex43578 3mo agoLike 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.
- Dylan16807 3mo agoThe 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.
- iamnothere 3mo agoI 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.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- db48x 3mo agoThere’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.
- Jtsummers 3mo ago> 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=FRACCQ0002 https://frame.work/products/usb-c-expansion-card?v=FRACCQ000... (or the one matching a color you prefer and your particular model)
- db48x 3mo agoNow you’ve got two things plugged into your laptop, instead of one that sticks out by an inch. :)
- kelnos 3mo agoEr, 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...
- RobotToaster 3mo agoI 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/origami_ethernet_port_1400x1400_anybody_know/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TechnologyPorn/comments/hvlxep/orig...
- RachelF 3mo agoEvery 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.
- jfb 3mo agoYeah, 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.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- Gigachad 3mo agoI 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.
- jfb 3mo agoYeah, I use DAC for the desktop and fibre between floors. It's just the Mac's desktop that uses RJ45 copper.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- drnick1 3mo ago> 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.
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- kevinten10 3mo ago[flagged]
- shieldly 3mo ago[dead]
- jeffbee 3mo agoI 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.
- petterroea 3mo agoFrankly, 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.
- MostlyStable 3mo agoAs 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-expansion-card-maybe/10446 https://community.frame.work/t/low-profile-ethernet-expansio...
- purpleidea 3mo agoHaving 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.
- drnick1 3mo agoDoes a laptop really need more than 1Gbps or whatever you can get through WiFi? It's an edge device not a router.
- koalalorenzo 3mo agoWell, 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. :)
- stephbook 3mo agoObviously 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.
- geocar 3mo agoYours 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.
- einsteinx2 3mo agoNo 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.
- drnick1 3mo ago> 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.
- ggm 3mo agoOnly getting 95% of the book rated speed? I'm OK, that's still a shitload-and-a-half of speed.
- Dylan16807 3mo agoThe point was how fussy it was to get that 95% instead of something closer to 75%.
- delamon 3mo agoHe only gets 4-5Gbps in the other direction.
- mxfh 3mo agoMore 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 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.
- gobelet 3mo agoI 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.
- matt-p 3mo agoI agree, but maybe not all slots need to be filled with blanks, maybe leaving one or two truly empty slots is OK.
- mixmastamyk 3mo agoThe usbc ones are just extension cables in a small box, which is why they are half the price of the others.
- ZekeSulastin 3mo agoFramework’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
- anonymousab 3mo agoLooks like it doesn't handle high impedance headphones well either. Oof.
- naturalmovement 3mo agoOnly 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.
- Patryk27 3mo agoI 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.
- naturalmovement 3mo agoI 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.
- Patryk27 3mo agoSo 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.
- naturalmovement 3mo ago[flagged]
- dmitrygr 3mo agoThe article never does resolve WHY it was slow in linux :(
- jeroenhd 3mo agoThe 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.
- cesarb 3mo ago> 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.
- ChuckMcM 3mo agoI 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.
- Dylan16807 3mo ago> 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.
- koolala 3mo agoReminds me of routers on the internet.
- rcoder 3mo agoThe "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.
- organsnyder 3mo agoI 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.
- nrp 3mo agoPoint 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.
- trollbridge 3mo agoVery cool to see an ecosystem developing around that form factor. Like the old PCMCIA, except not awful.
- geerlingguy 3mo agoI 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.
- znpy 3mo agohey 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.
- aaronmdjones 3mo agovPro 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).
- znpy 3mo ago> vPro requires the NIC to be connected directly to the PCH (over PCIe/CNV). This is going over USB, which won't cut it. i see, i did not know about this. however, let me use your knowledge and ask you another question: vpro-enabled thinkpads without an ethernet port do have a dongle that should allow vpro-usage. is that some kind of vpro-specific dongle? i mean, iirc that dongle also has to be connected to a very specific port
- hdgvhicv 3mo ago10g copper is notoriously power hungry. That’s why 90%+ of my 10g ports are SFPs.
- Aissen 3mo agoBefore 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.
- adrian_b 3mo agoUnlike "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.
- arghwhat 3mo agoWell, 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.
- adrian_b 3mo ago10 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.
- retired 3mo agoWhat 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?
- matt-p 3mo agoIt 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.
- raverbashing 3mo agoSounds 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
- tristor 3mo agoI 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.
- bdavbdav 3mo agoI'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
- tristor 3mo agoMy 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).
- bdavbdav 3mo agoSame principle here - 2.5GBE dock on the desk, and UniFi WiFi 7 everywhere else. Though switching to the WiFi 7, which hits 1gb+ just about everywhere in the house, I generally feel less inclination to hit the desk
- 0x457 3mo agoI'd rather have TB4 dongle with SFP+, rather than two extra heaters.
- 0xB0D 3mo agoJeff surely understands that heat dissipation converting to 10g is unavoidable. You really need an optical interface for these speeds.
- brandonpelfrey 3mo agoI view the temperature issue almost entirely as a copper problem. Every interface where you use CATx cables will have this issue; It's always extremely hot. For 10Gbps+ SFP and faster fiber is always the answer because those have very little thermal issues. The "only" issue is very few residential places have fiber cabling etc.
- 1e1a 3mo agoI wonder why they went with USB-C for expansion slots instead of PCIe
- kristianp 3mo agoThe photos on that page look good, with detectable in focus and out of focus areas. Looking at this equipment page, https://github.com/geerlingguy/youtube#equipment https://github.com/geerlingguy/youtube#equipment he's using full frame or aps-c cameras. The exif reported resolution on one of the images suggests they might be frames from the 4k video.