USB network adapters

[root]

Anyone here playing with USB network adapters?

I have a (noname) USB3 Gigabit ethernet adapter which seems capped at 250 Mbps. I know the Tinkerboard only has USB 2.0 (so a theoretical maximum of 480 Mbps),  just trying to see if there are better parts out there I could try.

[chwe]

it would make sense to figure out what's inside your network adapter (e.g. chipset).. 

 

27 minutes ago, root said:

Anyone here playing with USB network adapters?

 

for the one he tested:

Quote

Since I want Lite's both USB host ports for disks, I used the OTG port and a Micro USB to USB adapter: a simple iperf test against a GbE device showed 270/300 Mbits/sec (depending on direction).

do you need a second ETH port?

[Rfreire]

Hello mr. Almighty powerful root

 

Take into account that the usb 2 connection is half duplex. That means, data flows in a single direction a time. That hinders some optimizations in tcp ip like in-flight packets, yielding lower throughput.

 

Consider VLAN tag. Which is grossly oversimplifying it, partitioning the same physical interface in different networks.

 

Takes only a VLAN tag capable switch, costing around 40 bucks.

[root]

6 hours ago, chwe said:

it would make sense to figure out what's inside your network adapter (e.g. chipset).. 

It appears to be a Lenovo adapter. lsusb output is too long to paste here, but it seems to be supporting all USB modes.

      Device can operate at Full Speed (12Mbps)
      Device can operate at High Speed (480Mbps)
      Device can operate at SuperSpeed (5Gbps)

Quote

do you need a second ETH port?

I'm using my TB as a VPN gateway (between the router and the modem, the router is effectively just a hub and Wifi AP in this setup). It worked fine on my 200/20 Mbps connection (getting full speed both ways), but since upgrading my line this has become the bottleneck. 

 

3 hours ago, Rfreire said:

Consider VLAN tag. Which is grossly oversimplifying it, partitioning the same physical interface in different networks.

Takes only a VLAN tag capable switch, costing around 40 bucks.

What if I just plug it into my router (gigabit on all ports) using the onboard GbE and then declare it as a gateway for all my network? Granted, the up/down traffic would flow on the same interface, so I'd never get a symmetric Gigabit connection, but it's better than 200-something Mbps, isn't it?

 

That failing, any suggestions of a board / mini-PC which:

- has at least a quad-core @ 2-something GHz or equivalent

- has at least two physical GbE interfaces

- runs Linux

- (ideally) is fanless?

[Rfreire]

Dear Root,

 

1 hour ago, root said:

That failing, any suggestions of a board / mini-PC which:

- has at least a quad-core @ 2-something GHz or equivalent

- has at least two physical GbE interfaces

- runs Linux

- (ideally) is fanless?

 

 

The Tinkerboard case use here at home is almost what you are describing.

 

For what is worth, I've been able to pull 900+Mbps of NAT throughput using the Tinkerboard Ethernet (see the below post)

 

You are inflicting more pain to yourself by trying to make this Gigabit interface work out of the USB 2.0 bus of the Tinkerboard.

If VLAN tag is really not an option (which would surely tackle your issues over there), take a look at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GIVQI3M/ and https://omnia.turris.cz/en/

Good luck!

- RF.

 

[root]

Confirmed about the onboard GbE - I got 930-940 Mbps out of with iperf. That's why I was thinking to use it as an "in-network gateway", which would be sufficient for my upgraded connection (450 Mbps down / 40 Mbps up). What I mean by that:

 

That's what I was testing in the meanwhile:

Current setup: PC -cable1-> router (Netgear R7000) -cable2-> Tinkerboard GbE interface -internal-> Wireguard encryption -internal-> Tinkerboard USB ethernet -cable3-> modem

 

Tested setup:  

PC and Tinkerboard both plugged into LAN ports on the router (TB using the onboard GbE). The router WAN port goes to the modem. The packets travel PC -> router -> tinkerboard -> they get encrypted here -> router -> modem.

I was able to get ~400 Mbps of Wireguard-encrypted traffic through the Tinkerboard, at the cost of ~45% CPU usage for Wireguard encryption. I *think* it could do up to ~600 Mbps without overheating the TB or consuming all the CPU.

 

In the end, the point is relatively moot:

- in my current setup, the bottleneck is the USB adapter.

- with a single GbE (as tested above), the bottleneck is the GbE interface, which needs to do both the "in" and "out" (so would share its 1 Gbps).

- with dual GbE (if they existed), the bottleneck would be the CPU, as it couldn't cope with 1 Gbps symmetric traffic.

 

I know the Turris Omnia. Nice tools, but sadly, they're just 2x 1.6 GHz. The box on the Amazon link looks really interesting.

 

Does anyone have any experience with Wireguard on J1900-based boxes? I cannot find a direct comparison in terms of computing power between the J1900 and the RK3288.