RJ45 compared to USB

[Elad]

Right now my friends Dell Dimension has no NIC card and just uses his cable modem with one of his USB ports. We were at radio shack and i mentioned that if he hooked up his Surf Cable modem to RJ45 and purchased a NIC card it would probably be faster, i know USB has some sort of limit on data transfer so i wanted to know. BTW its only a 1MBIT connection so we wanted to know if upgrading to RJ45 and a NIC card would be a waste of time?
Thanks for all your help

Also i was wondering how wide spread is USB 2 is it even released yet?????

[rond36]

USB 1.1 transfers data at 12MB per sec so I don't think it makes a difference. If the cable MODEM is like my DSL MODEM it has a throughput of 10MB per sec anyway whether it is hooked up to USB or RJ45 and a 10/100 NIC.

The speed of USB becomes a problem when you have other computers on a network and you are using USB 1.1 limited to 12MBps and they are using RJ45 at 100MBps. The USB devices become a major bottleneck. The problem really shows up when you hook drives up to USB.

Firewire at 400MBps and USB 2.0 at 480MBps should solve this problem.

Note: MODEM speed in megabits 1 X 1024 = 1024 bps USB 1.1 speed in megabytes need to multiply by 8 to get megabits 12 X 1024 X 8 = 98304 bps

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How to Use Fdisk and Format to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q255867)
How to multi-boot Windows XP (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/gettingstarted/multiboot.asp)
Microsoft Expert Zone Multi-booting made easy (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/russel/september10.asp)
MSKB How to multi-boot Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q306559)

[iisbob]

We need to be absolutely clear here that you understand that the speed of USB & your NIC is in Megabits-not Bytes, big difference.

USB 1.1 transfers at 12Mbps per sec-or about 1.5 MB's persec ( USB 2.0 promises 480 Mbps, or about 50 MB's ).

Your average network is baseband, or around 10 Mbps persec ( more or less around 1 MB )-you'll not see any improvement of throughput by going with a NIC over USB since they both use the same path.

The only benefit i know of off hand would be the fact that if you don't have the most up to date drivers for your USB , you'll have problems with spotty connections.

You could have told your cable provider that you have a MAC and don't have USB, forcing them to give you a NIC. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif



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iisbob

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.-Mark Twain

[Elad]

Iisbob that would mean that you would be cheating a major corporation, that is WRONG!!! j/k I LMAO everytime i download some ware off of a site, it is just funny stealing stuff like that. Also we are planning a Lan Party for sometime this summer would we need to upgrade then to RJ45 or not or could we just hook the RJ45 right up to the modem than run it to the hub???
thanks for all the help

So USB 2.0 is already out??? if so how long and is it widely available and are alot of devices compatible with it???

[rond36]

My mistake USB is 12Mbps not 12MBps

------------------
How to Use Fdisk and Format to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q255867)
How to multi-boot Windows XP (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/gettingstarted/multiboot.asp)
Microsoft Expert Zone Multi-booting made easy (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/russel/september10.asp)
MSKB How to multi-boot Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q306559)

[iisbob]

if you are wanting to run a lan party off your current configuration-i'd just install a second NIC, and assign it it's own IP. then use it to setup your own little network-and i'd go with a switch, they are not much more expensive than a hub, and will provide better bandwidth since they only send the data to the system specified and don't broadcast it to all the connected nodes.



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iisbob

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.-Mark Twain