€75 would be a steal (ähem, quite an appropriate price)! Been waiting for this for what seems like an eternity... not seeing this on alternate.de quite yet...
But I am somewhat astounded overall that they use this NBase-T->PCIe x1->PCIe x1->USB 3.1 setup here: Aquantia is supposed to offer a single chip solution for this on I guess a larger process node called the ACQ111U (5Gbit) or ACQ112U (2.5Gbit)...
So did those turn out to be too power hungry to be practical? Is that why we never saw actual products?
Are these smaller ACQ111/112C chips so much more power efficient (or cheaper) that even adding another chip for the PCIe to USB leg works out?
The power consumption of Aquantia chips doesn't scale all that much with process node, as a major fraction of the total power is for the analog part, including output drivers. These don't scale with process node.
Yeah, $212 seems remarkably high. FWIW Apple (you know, the supposed ogre that always charges far too much for everything) charges $100 to upgrade a mac mini from 1Gb to 10Gb ethernet. Which suggests that the basic chips required are not THAT expensive.
Of course an adaptor also needs the USB3 side, but still, suggests the dollar price is substantially out of wack. 75 euros seems much more plausible.
Keep in mind the mac min 10GbE upgrade presumable uses PCIe, which is the norm, not a special USB 3.0 adapter chip(s). You can get 10GbE nics well south of $100 but good luck finding say similar thunderbolt to 10GbE for under $150. I looked for USB 3.0 to 10GbE which is what this device is and could not find any listed on Amazon. Which means this is a specialty product that is the first (or one of the first) to market which more than justifies a cost premium.
Since USB3.0 maxes out at 5Gbps, it should not surprise anyone that people are selling 5G ethernet adaptors, not 10G...
The beautifully named 3.1 Gen2 gives us 10Gbps but then you hit the clusterfsck that is implied by the name... You can kinda assume that high-end consumers will be using some generation of Thunderbolt or USB-C; you can't rely on anyone having 3.1 Gen2. And who wants the hassle of selling a product where 90% of the reviewers say "I tried it on my computer and I only get 4Gbps. Total scam!"
Yeah that statement is really odd. They don't have a driver download for Linux on their website either. The 3.2, 3.10, 3.12, and 4.2 kernels are not LTS so either they worked with Red Hat or other vendors directly or they may offer a tarball to download soon. Hopefully they upstreamed their driver in any case.
If you're the NYSE and you're running Redhat, that's probably one of the kernels you're using because it works, and redhat patches any security flaws found anyway.
I don't get this at all. You still need to plug it in to a 10Gb switch. So why knee-cap your speed when you can just get a 10Gb adaptor. This release makes literally no sense. 10Gb adapters aren't very expensive either. I mean I guess for people who want to use legacy copper? Doesn't sound like a huge market.
Because there's about a billion devices that either A. You can't fit a 10Gb adaptor, such as no pci slot. B. There is no way to install an adapter. C. You don't have a thunderbolt 3 to get the really expensive 10Gb adapter. So actually, yeah there is a huge market.
USB 3.0 and 3.1 have latency issues that make 10G adapters top out around 6G while tripling the cost, where the 5G variants seem to always perform between 2.5G and their designated 5G while being far more compatible as they draw less power and not all laptops provide the full power to their USB ports. Thunderbolt 3 ports however don't have those same latency problems and they have a hard-line stance on the ports power delivery specifications which is why you can already find a number of TB3 to 10G adapters there.
Why do you assume this is a mobile device? I honestly expect by far the bulk of these to sell to stationary devices where people want a nice, reasonably cheap, upgrade to their PC or Mac network.
There's actually a LOT of space between 1 and 10Gb. On the switch side, an alternative to a switch with one (or two) 10Gb ports is a switch with a range of ports, maybe 2@1, [email protected], 2@5, 2@10. Something like Netgear MS510TX.
I think it's simply a genuine fact that - lots of people want faster than 1Gb - but don't want to pay the costs (in dollars and power) required to convert to full 10Gb across the board. Mixing and matching devices across your network to 2.5 and 5 makes sense for many. Of course it's not full 10Gb --- and full 10Gb is not full optical --- and full optical is not 400Gb... You upgrade to what makes sense for your circumstances and budget.
Well you only need an NBASE-T switch. All NBASE-T products should be backwards and forwards compatible. If you plug a 5G host into a 10G switch it runs at 5G. If you plug a 5G host into a 2.5G switch port it runs at 2.5G.
You could have two laptops and two of these adapters, one connected to each laptop. Then, simply make the connection between them with 1-3m network cable and the network cards auto detect the pairs and work perfectly fine - if you assign to each computer a unique IP address, you got yourself a network. In real world, it's unlikely you'll get more than 4gbps or so ... usb has overhead, pci-e has overhead, add those together and you lose a lot of bandwidth
I have a "high end home WiFi router" (but still "home", not commercial,) that has a single 5 Gbps port along with its 8 1 Gbps ports. I also have a home server with no >1 Gbps port, no internal expansion, but it does have a USB 3 port.
This will allow me to serve up multiple local machines at the same time >1 Gbps of bandwidth total, even if bandwidth to each machine individually is <1 Gbps. Which would be great. My kid (teenager) is getting in to video editing, and uses the home server for file storage. I have all our DVD/Blu-ray ripped to full quality rips on the server. As it stands now, if I try watching a Blu-ray while the kid is video editing, my movie stutters.
If they can keep the price of these under or near $100 I expect these will sell well for them. Surprisingly I don't see any other comparable product for sell on Amazon atm. There are thunderbolt 3 to 10gbe adapter for sell but they are going for ~$180 atm on Amazon.
Club3D do a 2.5Gbps usb dongle for ~ £40 here in the UK (think $40 once the tax and currency jumbles are done). That uses the Realtek chip so really should be ~ £20 but given noone else seems to be offering them (even at AliExpress etc) i'm not surprised it's 40. Codes are CAC-1420 / CAC-1520 for USB3/C connectors.
Switches for this are gradually coming out too (Netgear have a few) and just picked up Trendnet box (30102WS) that has 8x 2.5Gb and 2x 10Gb SPF+ when I saw the price (£99) I thought FINALLY prices getting sensible ... until I tried to order another for the other side of the house and it was coming up at £450. Guess I should feel lucky for the one I got at that amount.
Realistically, I think 10GbE is unlikely to really take off - the power consumption is 3-4 times SPF+, and for most who actually need more speed, cheap, universal low power 2.5Gb would be nice for now (and anyone who whines saying no point I want 10Gb really doesn't need more speed as they'd take what they can get). FYI that switch uses over 20w compare to 4-5w for a comparable gigabit device.
Was going to buy one of these until I actually read all the info on Qnap's website, it connects at up to 5Gbit but it only actually transfers at a max of 3.5Gbit.
Yep biggest problem you are going to run into with this, is that people will think all 10gbe switches/nics are backwards compatible with 5gbe when that is not the case. If you wanted to connect to a synology then there is only one card that is compatible with 5gbe & synology that is the Intel x550 which is pricey...
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
38 Comments
Back to Article
UpSpin - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
75 Euro in Germany, according to the German QNAP press release.abufrejoval - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
€75 would be a steal (ähem, quite an appropriate price)! Been waiting for this for what seems like an eternity... not seeing this on alternate.de quite yet...But I am somewhat astounded overall that they use this NBase-T->PCIe x1->PCIe x1->USB 3.1 setup here: Aquantia is supposed to offer a single chip solution for this on I guess a larger process node called the ACQ111U (5Gbit) or ACQ112U (2.5Gbit)...
So did those turn out to be too power hungry to be practical? Is that why we never saw actual products?
Are these smaller ACQ111/112C chips so much more power efficient (or cheaper) that even adding another chip for the PCIe to USB leg works out?
MrSpadge - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
The power consumption of Aquantia chips doesn't scale all that much with process node, as a major fraction of the total power is for the analog part, including output drivers. These don't scale with process node.name99 - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Yeah, $212 seems remarkably high.FWIW Apple (you know, the supposed ogre that always charges far too much for everything) charges $100 to upgrade a mac mini from 1Gb to 10Gb ethernet. Which suggests that the basic chips required are not THAT expensive.
Of course an adaptor also needs the USB3 side, but still, suggests the dollar price is substantially out of wack. 75 euros seems much more plausible.
nucc1 - Friday, May 24, 2019 - link
Yea, right after you have paid $5000 for the rest of the machine. I can see how this is a valid comparison.DanNeely - Friday, May 24, 2019 - link
Your sarcasm contains why it's relevant. Apple charges huge margins on every other upgrade; why wouldn't they also do the same for 10gbe.CharonPDX - Friday, May 24, 2019 - link
It's a $100 upgrade on an $800 machine. But thanks for playing.Skeptical123 - Saturday, May 25, 2019 - link
Keep in mind the mac min 10GbE upgrade presumable uses PCIe, which is the norm, not a special USB 3.0 adapter chip(s). You can get 10GbE nics well south of $100 but good luck finding say similar thunderbolt to 10GbE for under $150. I looked for USB 3.0 to 10GbE which is what this device is and could not find any listed on Amazon. Which means this is a specialty product that is the first (or one of the first) to market which more than justifies a cost premium.name99 - Sunday, May 26, 2019 - link
Since USB3.0 maxes out at 5Gbps, it should not surprise anyone that people are selling 5G ethernet adaptors, not 10G...The beautifully named 3.1 Gen2 gives us 10Gbps but then you hit the clusterfsck that is implied by the name... You can kinda assume that high-end consumers will be using some generation of Thunderbolt or USB-C; you can't rely on anyone having 3.1 Gen2. And who wants the hassle of selling a product where 90% of the reviewers say "I tried it on my computer and I only get 4Gbps. Total scam!"
bug77 - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
What?
abufrejoval - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Kernel versions, but actually I believe they have merged the code for these into mainline some time ago.mooninite - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Yeah that statement is really odd. They don't have a driver download for Linux on their website either. The 3.2, 3.10, 3.12, and 4.2 kernels are not LTS so either they worked with Red Hat or other vendors directly or they may offer a tarball to download soon. Hopefully they upstreamed their driver in any case.bug77 - Friday, May 24, 2019 - link
But if those are kernel versions, they're, like, ancient.nucc1 - Friday, May 24, 2019 - link
If you're the NYSE and you're running Redhat, that's probably one of the kernels you're using because it works, and redhat patches any security flaws found anyway.profssrfink - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
I don't get this at all. You still need to plug it in to a 10Gb switch. So why knee-cap your speed when you can just get a 10Gb adaptor. This release makes literally no sense. 10Gb adapters aren't very expensive either. I mean I guess for people who want to use legacy copper? Doesn't sound like a huge market.PixyMisa - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
For laptops and all-in-ones that don't have PCIe slots.Dug - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Because there's about a billion devices that either A. You can't fit a 10Gb adaptor, such as no pci slot. B. There is no way to install an adapter. C. You don't have a thunderbolt 3 to get the really expensive 10Gb adapter. So actually, yeah there is a huge market.Lakados - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
USB 3.0 and 3.1 have latency issues that make 10G adapters top out around 6G while tripling the cost, where the 5G variants seem to always perform between 2.5G and their designated 5G while being far more compatible as they draw less power and not all laptops provide the full power to their USB ports. Thunderbolt 3 ports however don't have those same latency problems and they have a hard-line stance on the ports power delivery specifications which is why you can already find a number of TB3 to 10G adapters there.brakdoo - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Don't listen to the weirdos, it's 100% about power consumption. 5 gbps is already a mess, 10 gbps is is a total fuckup when it comes to power.brakdoo - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Their description: "A fanless desiign with shallow grooves provides effective heat dissipation".Meaning your battery is empty in 3,2,1... QNAP
name99 - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Why do you assume this is a mobile device?I honestly expect by far the bulk of these to sell to stationary devices where people want a nice, reasonably cheap, upgrade to their PC or Mac network.
name99 - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
There's actually a LOT of space between 1 and 10Gb. On the switch side, an alternative to a switch with one (or two) 10Gb ports is a switch with a range of ports, maybe 2@1, [email protected], 2@5, 2@10. Something like Netgear MS510TX.I think it's simply a genuine fact that
- lots of people want faster than 1Gb
- but don't want to pay the costs (in dollars and power) required to convert to full 10Gb across the board.
Mixing and matching devices across your network to 2.5 and 5 makes sense for many. Of course it's not full 10Gb --- and full 10Gb is not full optical --- and full optical is not 400Gb...
You upgrade to what makes sense for your circumstances and budget.
namechamps - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Well you only need an NBASE-T switch. All NBASE-T products should be backwards and forwards compatible. If you plug a 5G host into a 10G switch it runs at 5G. If you plug a 5G host into a 2.5G switch port it runs at 2.5G.DanNeely - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
2.5/5G are newer standards than 10G, so AFAIK older 10G switches won't recognize them and will fall back on 1G speeds.Notmyusualid - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
@ Dan - absolutely right. None of my 10G swtiches will do anything other than 1G or 10G. Nothing inbetween.mariush - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
You could have two laptops and two of these adapters, one connected to each laptop.Then, simply make the connection between them with 1-3m network cable and the network cards auto detect the pairs and work perfectly fine - if you assign to each computer a unique IP address, you got yourself a network.
In real world, it's unlikely you'll get more than 4gbps or so ... usb has overhead, pci-e has overhead, add those together and you lose a lot of bandwidth
piroroadkill - Friday, May 24, 2019 - link
Nope, you can get 2.5 & 5Gbit switches, although uncommon. Also, you can run it over old cat5e cabling, which is an absolutely ENORMOUS marketCharonPDX - Friday, May 24, 2019 - link
I have a "high end home WiFi router" (but still "home", not commercial,) that has a single 5 Gbps port along with its 8 1 Gbps ports. I also have a home server with no >1 Gbps port, no internal expansion, but it does have a USB 3 port.This will allow me to serve up multiple local machines at the same time >1 Gbps of bandwidth total, even if bandwidth to each machine individually is <1 Gbps. Which would be great. My kid (teenager) is getting in to video editing, and uses the home server for file storage. I have all our DVD/Blu-ray ripped to full quality rips on the server. As it stands now, if I try watching a Blu-ray while the kid is video editing, my movie stutters.
Skeptical123 - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
If they can keep the price of these under or near $100 I expect these will sell well for them. Surprisingly I don't see any other comparable product for sell on Amazon atm. There are thunderbolt 3 to 10gbe adapter for sell but they are going for ~$180 atm on Amazon.Notmyusualid - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
..but I expect the TB3 versions to actually do 10G well.Skeptical123 - Saturday, May 25, 2019 - link
...Fair but not all machines have TB3Skeptical123 - Saturday, May 25, 2019 - link
...Fair but not all machines have TB3umano - Friday, May 24, 2019 - link
That's good news but i really hope next generation of mb will have 10gbedontlistentome - Friday, May 24, 2019 - link
Club3D do a 2.5Gbps usb dongle for ~ £40 here in the UK (think $40 once the tax and currency jumbles are done). That uses the Realtek chip so really should be ~ £20 but given noone else seems to be offering them (even at AliExpress etc) i'm not surprised it's 40. Codes are CAC-1420 / CAC-1520 for USB3/C connectors.Switches for this are gradually coming out too (Netgear have a few) and just picked up Trendnet box (30102WS) that has 8x 2.5Gb and 2x 10Gb SPF+ when I saw the price (£99) I thought FINALLY prices getting sensible ... until I tried to order another for the other side of the house and it was coming up at £450. Guess I should feel lucky for the one I got at that amount.
Realistically, I think 10GbE is unlikely to really take off - the power consumption is 3-4 times SPF+, and for most who actually need more speed, cheap, universal low power 2.5Gb would be nice for now (and anyone who whines saying no point I want 10Gb really doesn't need more speed as they'd take what they can get). FYI that switch uses over 20w compare to 4-5w for a comparable gigabit device.
JTB3 - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Fortunately, the QNAP QNA-UC5G1T (USB 3.0 to 5GbE Adapter) retail price has now dropped below $100. Availability is scheduled for end-of June, 2019. See: https://www.google.com/shopping/product/9101482770...James_Edge - Friday, June 7, 2019 - link
Was going to buy one of these until I actually read all the info on Qnap's website, it connects at up to 5Gbit but it only actually transfers at a max of 3.5Gbit.kwinz - Sunday, June 16, 2019 - link
Can somebody please benchmark this thing with iperf? Thanks in advance!Wask11 - Wednesday, June 19, 2019 - link
Yep biggest problem you are going to run into with this, is that people will think all 10gbe switches/nics are backwards compatible with 5gbe when that is not the case. If you wanted to connect to a synology then there is only one card that is compatible with 5gbe & synology that is the Intel x550 which is pricey...