Is it possible to use USB3 to USB3 networking at home? max cable length?

[Tech_TTT]

Hello,

Just a crazy Idea ...

Can I use USB3 to USB3 to connect computers and NAS Devices ? and what is the maximum length of USB3 cable ?

This would be dirt cheap networking .. all our pc have tons of unused USB3 ports. would allow 500MB/s transfer networking... for no cost but USB3 cables ...

I can dig holes in the wall to make the cable very short between rooms.

 

[nigelivey]

Good luck trying to reinvent the wheel. If you feel cobbling together a network using a sub system that was never designed for the task is a good I ideal you go for it. Active USB cables are nothing new, personally I wouldn't use them for anything other than extending a usb touch interface on a screen. I hope you aren't going to use this for anything production critical as you are relying on software to even make the interface work. You can carry ethernet over HDMI, not sure why anyone would.

I am not reinventing the wheel , I am using the wheel to make a car.

have a nice day.

Like I said if you want to do it go for it. If you're not prepared to listen to network pros there is little point coming on a networking forum. You might as well be using a cucumber. Watching a few episodes of MacGyver, might help you in your crusade.

I am still waiting for the pros .. those who replied are not pros. neither you are one .

Well my CV, education, certifications and very successful business really would counter such a childish claim, yet you are the one wanting to run a network over USB? "neither you are one" neither are you one" fixed that for you.

This topic is not about your CV nor your Qualifications , either say good ideas .. or stop bothering me .

continue this flaming and going off topic and you will be reported.

No it was about offering good free advise which you refuse to listen to and then you insult people, you questioned whether I or any other person here were professionals. I made it quite clear that if this is the way you wish to proceed then you go for it. I don't think you have thought it through properly as you haven't considered some very basic elements. Or maybe you have and just haven't shared the way you have thought this through. Good luck. (Report if you wish, I'm not going to cry myself to sleep over it).

 

[Tech_TTT]

@nigelivey

I did not insult any one . and none who replied are professionals . and it was not me who brought this "professionals" term up , you popped up mentioning it. and I cleared it out that those are normal visitors not even professionals. a professional never replies like this in General terms ... no one even mentioned the repeaters until I Mentioned them.

Now you said what you wanted to say , no need to repeat yourself your message is understood . time to wait for people ideas .

I do listen to ideas or critic ion detail ,. and I never saw any professional critic here just General talking and offtopic "invent the wheel" General talking.

This is not professional at all. this is called flaming. stop messing up this thread .

 

[USAFRet]

Everyone take a deep breath and chill out.


Now...on to the original request.
I'm struggling to find the utility of cobbling together some USB situation, vs a known working situation with inexpensive Cat5e, and the LAN adapters already built in.

I too have multiple systems and a NAS box, and the standard 1G ethernet works just fine.
In the future, and as prices fall and needs rise...eventually that will become a 10G solution.

But this is a solution designed and built for networking. Not forcing some other protocol to try to be networking.

Given a single 100 foot Cat5e vs USB with multiple repeaters in the middle...I know which I'd choose, no contest.

 

[nigelivey]

@nigelivey

I did not insult any one . and none who replied are professionals . and it was not me who brought this "professionals" term up , you popped up mentioning it. and I cleared it out that those are normal visitors not even professionals. a professional never replies like this in General terms ... no one even mentioned the repeaters until I Mentioned them.

Now you said what you wanted to say , no need to repeat yourself your message is understood . time to wait for people ideas .

I do listen to ideas or critic ion detail ,. and I never saw any professional critic here just General talking and offtopic "invent the wheel" General talking.

This is not professional at all. this is called flaming. stop

"and none who replied are professionals" well i know for a fact two people in this thread are, I wouldnt like to comment on your situation as that would be very rude and ever so arrogant. Peace.

 

[Tech_TTT]

Everyone take a deep breath and chill out.


Now...on to the original request.
I'm struggling to find the utility of cobbling together some USB situation, vs a known working situation with inexpensive Cat5e, and the LAN adapters already built in.

I too have multiple systems and a NAS box, and the standard 1G ethernet works just fine.
In the future, and as prices fall and needs rise...eventually that will become a 10G solution.

But this is a solution designed and built for networking. Not forcing some other protocol to try to be networking.

Given a single 100 foot Cat5e vs USB with multiple repeaters in the middle...I know which I'd choose, no contest.

Glad you replied , I know 1000% that LAN is better no Questions about it . but this is experimental , I noticed that USB LAN adapters work without problems , so the Driver for USB to LAN already exists .. the only problem was the cable length .., I will order some active USB3 cables and test them .

Actually , If the USB3 works , I will move to USB3.1 , and I am thinking about using the extra power USB 3.1 C ports can deliver to power the repeaters thats 100Watt USB C , can power all the repeaters !!!

IF the USB 3 works , The next step will be the 3.1 C ,

Imagine 20Gb/s network for DIRT CHEAP !

There are drivers that will make your external USB harddisk look like a LAN harddisk .. I will look into those as well.

any Ideas welcomed.

 

[atljsf]

this obseson to make a usb 3 port work as a network adapter has no sense

for one simple reason, you need a network to share that device to more devices than the one pc we are talking about

how do you plan to assign a addres, unique and identifiable on a network for the nas and for the other pcs?

you already have that via tcp ip

i understand your real interest on creating a interesting and creative solution for your file sotrage needs, it does exist a usb 2 solution, yes

but is not going to be easy, cheap or simple tomaintain on any pc

you have the time and patiente to search for the way to make it work but i honestly think it is not worth the time

there is a big chance that you can make it work but file copy process is not fast and stable, so it could very well be a waste of time, both yours and ours, who tried to understand your question and a posible way to make it work

i honestly wish you good luck

remember that as plan b, you can use cat 6 wiring and a good switch to make this happen, a good gigabit connection might be more thna enough for you, perhaps not as fast as a usb 3 cable running at maximum speeds but honestly, it is what most of us use atm

there is a third option you haven't considered, a thunderbolt port over usb 4.1 type c

this is a workaround in every way, it is extra hardware on all machines, but it doesn't limit you in terms of distance, optical fiber can go 100 metters without much problems, usb can do 1 meter and gets full of noise and resistance form the copper on the wire itself

 

[abailey]

I think it is an interesting idea. There are many problems to overcome though. Besides the cable length you really need to look at the architecture of the PC's you are using. For example my PC has two onboard USB controllers. These controllers have 8 USB connectors on my PC (four on each). So anything connected to a single controller must share bandwidth with anything else on that controller. Then you also have to look at how your controllers are connected to your processor. You need to study this carefully if you want to try to get anywhere near 5GB. Then there is the issue of how well the drivers are written. Of course poorly written drivers can hamstring your max throughput very easily.

 

[Karadjgne]

I understand op's obsession, file transfer and Internet is already available via gigabit WiFi USB3, so if that's possible, then wired should be possible. What remains to be seen is if it's a) cost effective vrs performance and b) a viable alternative.
For all I know, it might be just as adaptable to use a USB to cat5 converter or even a USB to coax adapter, use cat5/coax around the house/business, and have multi-port capability at every termination. It would solve repeater issues and allow for any USB component hookup, be it phone or cable box or laptop.

Possibilities exist, but don't become probabilities until someone makes it happen.

 

[atljsf]

wifi over usb and network over usb are two extremely different things

i do think it is posible, yes, but not easy, cheap or reliable

 

[Tech_TTT]

I think it is an interesting idea. There are many problems to overcome though. Besides the cable length you really need to look at the architecture of the PC's you are using. For example my PC has two onboard USB controllers. These controllers have 8 USB connectors on my PC (four on each). So anything connected to a single controller must share bandwidth with anything else on that controller. Then you also have to look at how your controllers are connected to your processor. You need to study this carefully if you want to try to get anywhere near 5GB. Then there is the issue of how well the drivers are written. Of course poorly written drivers can hamstring your max throughput very easily.

The Central PC (Switch ) will have the USB3.0 ports on CPU lanes and not the chipset one, to avoid DMI3.0/2.0 Bottleneck .

The other Pcs will use the on board USB3 ...

if this works , I will move to USB3.1 after that .

This 5Gb/s will not even be shared ... the backbone will be (number of USB3 X 5Gb/s )...

 

[RealBeast]

Sorry, but the idea of using USB 3.0 for a high speed connection to your NAS is not really feasible.

I guess my first question would be what storage device is connecting to what other storage device that each have more than the need for gigabit Ethernet -- and don't say a small (1TB or less) SSD as the time to transfer that is just not enough to warrant discussion. Multi-terabyte transfers between storage arrays perhaps?

If you really want a high speed connection from one computer to the NAS (that is within 15 feet) and will most likely be limited by your disk and/or array speeds use a pair of Intel X520-DA2 and a 5m SFP+ cable for 10Gbps over copper. I use them to connect servers that have large data transfer needs as most storage devices cannot saturate than bandwidth.

You can get original new Intel cards/cable from EBay for less than $150 each shipped direct from China (I've bought plenty and they all worked well). You do need to use at least an x4 PCIe slot for each card but it costs a lot less than other 10GbE by giving up distance and some flexibility but you get what you pay for.

If you don't need 10Gbs for that sort of thing then this is just a waste of a big thread on another home cooked "idea." Good luck.

 

[boosted1g]

The Central PC (Switch ) will have the USB3.0 ports on CPU lanes and not the chipset one, to avoid DMI3.0/2.0 Bottleneck .

The other Pcs will use the on board USB3 ...

if this works , I will move to USB3.1 after that .

This 5Gb/s will not even be shared ... the backbone will be (number of USB3 X 5Gb/s )...

There is a large difference between this card: https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Express-Expansion-Connector-Renesas/dp/B011LZY20G
And this one: https://www.amazon.com/Express-SuperSpeed-Adapter-Dedicated-Channels/dp/B00HJZEA2S

The first one (by far the most common and also how your motherbaord ports are configured) SHARES the 5gbps bandwidth accross the 4 ports. The second card has the bandwidth to have 4 independent 5gbps links.

Us "idiots" with jobs, certifications and businesses in networking have to have education and knowledge in how the TCP/IP protocal and the rest of the OSI model actually works and that trying to fake it over USB cables is no easy feat.
A USB to Ethernet Driver works because it is written for the chip in the adapter, its not like they just took the 9 pins of wires in USB 3.0 and wired it to the 8 pins in an RJ45 jack. Thus you cant just take TP-Link's adapter driver and use it for your adapter-less USB 3.0 cable and poof you have a "network connection."

Driver aside, with no real ethernet adapter (and nothing providing DHCP) you will not only need to manually setup a unique IP address for every USB 3.0 port being used for this on the NAS and on each computer, but ( unless the driver does it for you) you will also need to make a bogus physical address for EVERY one of those connections as well (this is a required part of all ethernet packets at layer 2)

What you have to realize is that your entire idea hangs on the hopes that someone else (not you) has written a USB driver for just a cable (not one with an ethernet nic built into it) to create an ethernet network connection with full support of TCP/IP.
This is just for the "it works' not even real world speeds or stability.

With that said it is certianly possibly that someone else has develped a USB 3.0 driver specifically for just a cable., this used to be "common...ish" with USB 2.0 male to male cables to transfer settings between computers in the windows XP/Vista days. Although this was more of a serial protocal connectoin, not ethernet.

Also, FYI considering you are forcing a driver as something it is not, dont be supprised if major windows updates require this to be completely re-setup.

 

[1_21gigawatts]

Hello,

Just a crazy Idea ...

Can I use USB3 to USB3 to connect computers and NAS Devices ? and what is the maximum length of USB3 cable ?

This would be dirt cheap networking .. all our pc have tons of unused USB3 ports. would allow 500MB/s transfer networking... for no cost but USB3 cables ...

I can dig holes in the wall to make the cable very short between rooms.

I wouldn't bother with that. What I would suggest is USB3 > Ethernet adapters, and then do a proper gigabit network. Those adapters are pretty cheap. https://goo.gl/kI5nmI is 12 bucks at amazon.