I was looking for a new USB-c hub and came across this article. It’s an interesting write-up of what is on the inside of some popular options
I was looking for a new USB-c hub and came across this article. It’s an interesting write-up of what is on the inside of some popular options
Almost certainly. Always go wired when possible. Not only will the wired device be faster, there will be more bandwidth available for other devices still using wireless. Wireless is a shared transmission medium you want as few devices using it as possible.
Thanks, some folks on reddit were saying the ethernet to USB degrades the speed of a native ethernet port or PCI (unfortunately my ITX build has no extra PCI slots). But even if I took a minor hit in speed, I prefer the consistency of having no packet loss. I live in a high density area with a lot of wifi networks nearby.
Ideally should I try to find a Intel Ethernet device?
If you have a native Ethernet port, use that. If you don’t, ethernet over USB-C or on a PCI card is approximately as good. A USB 3.0 adapter + port is technically slower, but if your network isn’t capable of speeds faster than a gigabit, the adapter won’t be the limiting factor. For most people, these are all good solutions. Faster networking equipment is still somewhat specialty/niche.
USB 2.0 adapters/ports can cause problems though, as it’s capped around half a gigabit. While this likely won’t affect your access speeds to the public internet, it will likely slow file transfers to other devices on your home network.
The chipset maker isn’t a perfect heuristic, as shown in the article, but I’ve had pretty good luck with Intel and Marvell.