Hands-On Tech 260 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Hands-On Tech, let's take a look at different file transfer options and which you should choose. Stay tuned. Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech. I am Mikah 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. hot@twit.tv is how you get in touch with me. Me.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:32]:
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, 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, um, as far as I know.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:04]:
And John writes the following: Mikah, 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 it like that because it is asked as a question. Other than connection issues, what are the differences? Do USB-C speeds surpass 1 gig and 10 gig Ethernet capabilities? I'm considering upgrading my mass, 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. Uh, love this, by the way, John, uh, that you went on to include some more information where you say, uh, the, where you give me some background. So you are planning to do video editing or you 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, and eero 6E Plus for wireless connectivity.
Mikah Sargent [00:02:09]:
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, one of four on the router, and then the eero 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. I called it the great connection question. Thunderbolt versus 10 gig versus USB-C.
Mikah Sargent [00:02:40]:
Let's kind of talk about, and forgive my math if I can, 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 Gigabyte Ethernet, 1 GBE, as the Ethernet is called, that's about 125 megabytes per second, or megabits per second, megabytes per second, yes. That is the transfer speed's theoretical max. So 125 MB per second. 2.5 gigabit Ethernet is about 312 megabytes per second. MB per second, theoretical max. 10 Gigabit Ethernet is 1,250 MB per second. So that's 1.25 gigs per second, theoretical max.
Mikah Sargent [00:03:40]:
Those are the Ethernet options, right? So again, 10 gig is giving you transfer speeds of about 1.25 gigabytes per second in transfer speeds. But here's the thing. We got to look at USB-C. With USB-C, assuming a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, that's 1,250 megabytes per second, which is on par with 10 gig, uh, Ethernet. USB-C 3.2 Gen 2. 2 has a theoretical speed of 2,500 megabytes per second, which is equivalent to about, um, you know, double the speed, uh, transfer speed of 10G, 10 gig. I know this is getting into some wild territory here. Thunderbolt 3, 5,000 megabytes, and then Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 5 theoretical max starts at 5,000 megabytes per second and goes up from there.
Mikah Sargent [00:04:50]:
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 directly answer your question, yes, USB-C can surpass 1 gig and even max 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 2x2, 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, uh, that 2,500 megabits per second, or excuse me, megabytes per second, it's still capped at the 10-gig Ethernet because that's as fast as it can go. This episode of Hands-On Tech is brought to you by DeleteMe. Ever wonder how much of your personal data is out there on the internet for anyone to see? It's more than you think.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:29]:
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Mikah Sargent [00:07:41]:
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Mikah Sargent [00:08:24]:
The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindelete.me.com/twit and enter code TWIT at checkout. That's joindelete.me.com/twit, code TWIT, T-W-I-T. Thanks so much to DeleteMe for sponsoring this week's episode of Hands-On Tech. 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, uh, with, with Thunderbolt 3, that's roughly 4 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, uh, 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, you know, move about the house as you need to. Uh, with, so, so that's Thunderbolt 3. 10 gig.
Mikah Sargent [00:09:23]:
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 to 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, um, a failure depending upon, 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 kind of another point of failure. You're adding latency instead of using a native 10-gig port.
Mikah Sargent [00:10:25]:
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, in the midst of things. Driver issues and power delivery, and then some of them not being able to, uh, 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 your, you know, 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.
Mikah Sargent [00:11:30]:
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, uh, 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. Uh, when it comes to the switch, you did mention that you have one 10 gig port on your 8 port 2.5 gig switch. It's a good question. 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 a switch that supports 10 gig on at least 2 ports, or you want to do a direct 10 gig connection between them.
Mikah Sargent [00:12:31]:
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 complement for network flexibility, but don't use it as a replacement for your Thunderbolt connection. For the USB-C dongle, uh-uh. 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, not the best option for you. Um, but for other computers on your network, fine, because they don't need to have the level of connection, right, that you do with these, with the network attached storage in order to access these files properly and use them. Uh, I know that there was a lot, that was a huge data dump, John.
Mikah Sargent [00:13:32]:
Uh, but I needed you, wanted you and everyone else to understand the difference between, because I, for a while there, 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. Um, but 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 going the Thunderbolt route is just the best thing you can do. John, thank you for writing in. Uh, 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.
