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Cable internet and USB

S

spaceghost21

Senior member
I just got cable internet today and I didn't have time to install an ethernet card so I just plugged it in to an open USB, Am I correct that this won't be as fast as an ethernet PCI card or is it just not as fast as I thought it was?
 
What speed is your cable service? And if you're plugged straight into your cable modem, I hope you have firewall software? woooooorms... :Q
 
Trust me, you definately want an ethernet card; even an el-cheapo $10 one is better than USB...

PS Hi Mech 😛
 
Originally posted by: ViRGE
Trust me, you definately want an ethernet card; even an el-cheapo $10 one is better than USB...

PS Hi Mech 😛
Click to expand...

Let's assume we're talking about 10/100Mb Ethernet and USB1.1. Let's ignore for the moment that most cable modems (all I've ever seen, at least) only support 10Mb ethernet.

The 100Mb Ethernet NIC gives about 9000K/s on a good connection.
USB1.1 gives about 600-900K/s.

The cable modem, from a typical ISP, gives around 300-400K/s. And that's typically only when downloading large files; for normal browsing speed will be 1/10th of that number.

How will ethernet be better than USB1.1?

(But yes, *get a firewall*!!!)
 
When I first got cable internet, I thought I would run it on USB, too. When the guy came to install it, he asked how I planned to connect it and I told him USB. He said that it is so much slower that way and gave me an ethernet adapter for free 🙂
 
Originally posted by: supafly
When I first got cable internet, I thought I would run it on USB, too. When the guy came to install it, he asked how I planned to connect it and I told him USB. He said that it is so much slower that way and gave me an ethernet adapter for free 🙂
Click to expand...

Cool deal - free is good. 🙂 But I can only wonder why he would think that, given the speed of the cable modem, the USB1.1 connection, and ethernet.
 
Ethernet is just more compatible, it works with all operating sytems, and recovery programs with network support. I used wake-on-lan to turn my computer on from a different city, you cant do that with usb.

Also its faster, IF you have really fast cable like my friend with 10mb. With ethernet he does about 1100k-1200k, with usb its only 900k.
 
Agreed - I use Ethernet myself, more because I have a network than for any other reason, but USB1.1 *will* work. My post was in response to another person that posted that USB1.1 was slow - for a normal cable modem, it isn't any faster or slower than ethernet.
 
Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
the usb will take up more cpu time to manage, where as the ethernet will do it itself
Click to expand...

USB does take more CPU time, but so does ethernet. In any case, we're talking about very small amounts of data; on a remotely modern CPU it isn't likely to be significant for most people.

I hate to be in the position of defending USB, particularly 1.1 - can we all agree that for most people USB1.1 is not any different from Ethernet for a typical DSL/cable connection of 125K/s to 350K/s?
 
If it's 1.1 I definitely don't agree. That bandwidth and bus are getting shared between all the devices. The few times I've had to network over USB it's caused a lot of problems with things like mice that need to use the bus constantly. Additionally, since even just the mouse and network was bad I didn't even try things that are bandwidth intensive like using my scanner, printer, hd enclosure, digicam, MP3 player, and tablet all of which also go into the USB bus when I need them. I'd definitely keep the modem off the USB, it's not a team player. ^^
 
Originally posted by: sunase
If it's 1.1 I definitely don't agree. That bandwidth and bus are getting shared between all the devices. The few times I've had to network over USB it's caused a lot of problems with things like mice that need to use the bus constantly. Additionally, since even just the mouse and network was bad I didn't even try things that are bandwidth intensive like using my scanner, printer, hd enclosure, digicam, MP3 player, and tablet all of which also go into the USB bus when I need them. I'd definitely keep the modem off the USB, it's not a team player. ^^
Click to expand...

OK, so let's imagine for some reason that you're *really* into stressing out that cable modem, so you download all day on it - ALL the time, even when you're doing other things, like downloading data from your camera, which is USB.

USB does 600-900K/s, and your DSL/cable modem does anywhere from 150-400K/s, so either way you have anywhere from 750K/s to 200K/s to play with. And that's without *any* slowdown. If a minor slowdown is acceptable for the 5 minutes or so that you transfer files to the camera, there's no issue.

So what's the problem?

(nevermind that for most people, this scenario isn't typical - very few people download all day long. We're talking about a very contrived situation here.)
 
Originally posted by: dclive
I hate to be in the position of defending USB, particularly 1.1 - can we all agree that for most people USB1.1 is not any different from Ethernet for a typical DSL/cable connection of 125K/s to 350K/s?
Click to expand...
No, USB networking is an ugly hack that's responsible for way too much system instability due to poorly written drivers, utilizes far too many resources for what it does, and is treated by the OS in such a way that full-speed USB will be the first thing to begin to act funny once the machine gets wormed/trojaned/spywared. If you have network problems, and are using USB, don't even come and see me until you have a proper Ethernet card.
 
Originally posted by: ViRGE
Originally posted by: dclive
I hate to be in the position of defending USB, particularly 1.1 - can we all agree that for most people USB1.1 is not any different from Ethernet for a typical DSL/cable connection of 125K/s to 350K/s?
Click to expand...
No, USB networking is an ugly hack that's responsible for way too much system instability due to poorly written drivers, utilizes far too many resources for what it does, and is treated by the OS in such a way that full-speed USB will be the first thing to begin to act funny once the machine gets wormed/trojaned/spywared. If you have network problems, and are using USB, don't even come and see me until you have a proper Ethernet card.
Click to expand...

I don't see what any of this has to do with worms/trojans, but in any case, we'll agree to disagree. 🙂

USB1.1 is slow and rotten - but for a simple cable modem connection, it's fine for most folks, IMHO. I understand there's a lot of disagreement on that and respect your opinion otherwise. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: dclive
I understand there's a lot of disagreement on that and respect your opinion otherwise. 🙂
Click to expand...
Of course, and the same here.🙂
 
Originally posted by: ViRGE
Originally posted by: dclive
I hate to be in the position of defending USB, particularly 1.1 - can we all agree that for most people USB1.1 is not any different from Ethernet for a typical DSL/cable connection of 125K/s to 350K/s?
Click to expand...
No, USB networking is an ugly hack that's responsible for way too much system instability due to poorly written drivers, utilizes far too many resources for what it does, and is treated by the OS in such a way that full-speed USB will be the first thing to begin to act funny once the machine gets wormed/trojaned/spywared. If you have network problems, and are using USB, don't even come and see me until you have a proper Ethernet card.
Click to expand...

^^ What he said. Obviously written by someone who's had the misfortune of installing USB "virtual-NIC" drivers onto a system. About the only thing worse that one could install onto their system, would be CoolWebSearch. Both are pretty difficult to get off of a system too. (Well, speaking of the awful Verizon DSL v4 software used to install a Westell 2100 in USB mode, at least. Thankfully that wasn't my main rig.)

Ironically, if the *only* way to hook up a broadband connection to a host machine was via a USB port, I would still suggest installing a USB ethernet card, and using ethernet to connect to the cable/DSL modem, or better, a NAT router, and then to the modem. I've had good luck with the "Datel PS2 network adaptor", it's an ADMTek "Pegasus II" USB 1.1 10/100 NIC, OEM drivers on their site, and actually showed better Windows' file-transfer performance than my onboard Via Rhine II NIC bridged to the PCI bus. Go figure.

But on the system that had the Verizon USB virtual-NIC software installed.. it screwed up networking on that machine hardcore, had to basically re-install completely.
 
Originally posted by: dclive
USB1.1 is slow and rotten - but for a simple cable modem connection, it's fine for most folks, IMHO. I understand there's a lot of disagreement on that and respect your opinion otherwise. 🙂
Click to expand...

That's like saying, that AOL's invasive client software installation and sub-par dialup service is fine for most folks. Yes, in a certain sense it is, but IMHO it is to be best avoided, if at all possible, and in as many cases as possible.

It's kind of like those old dynamic-drive-overlay drivers, for using bigger HDs than a system could nominally support. If it's the only way, then sure, use it, but it should be an absolute last resort, for both compatibility and performance reasons.

Considering that PCI 10/100 NICs are what, $5 these days, I would consider it somewhat irresponsible of an installer not to go that route, if the client has PCI slots free. Most mobos, even cheapo OEM "integrated" ones, also have onboard NICs too. Another benefit, you can use a NAT router box (or wireless).
 
Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Originally posted by: dclive
USB1.1 is slow and rotten - but for a simple cable modem connection, it's fine for most folks, IMHO. I understand there's a lot of disagreement on that and respect your opinion otherwise. 🙂
Click to expand...

That's like saying, that AOL's invasive client software installation and sub-par dialup service is fine for most folks. Yes, in a certain sense it is, but IMHO it is to be best avoided, if at all possible, and in as many cases as possible.

It's kind of like those old dynamic-drive-overlay drivers, for using bigger HDs than a system could nominally support. If it's the only way, then sure, use it, but it should be an absolute last resort, for both compatibility and performance reasons.

Considering that PCI 10/100 NICs are what, $5 these days, I would consider it somewhat irresponsible of an installer not to go that route, if the client has PCI slots free. Most mobos, even cheapo OEM "integrated" ones, also have onboard NICs too. Another benefit, you can use a NAT router box (or wireless).
Click to expand...

I *strongly* agree with that last sentence!

However....

Having a not-really-educated (sometimes, at least) installer from your cable company open a computer, possibly remove it from an enclosure and unscrew everything and slap a $5 PCI card in there and then try to put everything back together again, vs. plugging in a USB cable. Not even a no-brainer - USB will win every time.

The fact that a small percentage of the population may see a marginal slowdown when under heavy network load *and* transferring stuff via other devices doesn't figure into that equation.

Casual users will never even notice this. It's mostly the hard-core gamers and folks that are familiar with computers and networks that would even think about something like this.

Again, I'm not thrilled about USB, but for the scenarios that have been suggested thus far, it isn't the end of the world as we know it - it works, it's simple, it's easy.
 
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