usb or ethernet ?

RAAF453_Shep · Post by **RAAF453_Shep** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 10:52 am

I have always used ethernet for cable access , but had a friends pc here, the other day, and my spare ethernet card died, so in despiration I dug out the cable modems cd, and hooked his tower up on USB. it installed instantly.

Now I did all his updates ( a format on his new 250 WD HD , he had me fix the reported volume issue )... he only had 56k @ home.

so I loaded some other software, did the last of the MS pieces, and did a speed test... WooooOOoah Mates , my best on ethernet, showed a solid 2.8 mb thruput. his showed 4.8 , on my same connection ?

It was amazing to see 400 megs dl'd in 5 minutes , on a 3 meg cable.

should I swap too ? I run an IIS off this rig , so dont want to bugger it up.

thanks in advance,

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 7:03 am

For servers and serious online gamers, I'd stick with PCI or onboard NIC over a USB NIC.

How he got faster downloads with the USB...I can't answer. I've seen a USB NIC go toe to toe with PCI based NICs many times before, as I've mentioned quite a few times here....when broadband is concerned, there really is no performance difference. A lot of people are under the false impression that USB is crippling slow compared to a PCI NIC.

How you saw one be twice as fast....well, a direct comparison, it shouldn't be, I dunno what situations happened to make it so in your case. A more fair comparison would be to stick a PCI NIC in his rig and bench it with that, right after running benchmarks with the USB NIC.

RAAF453_Shep · Post by **RAAF453_Shep** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 7:28 am

Thanks YOSC,

I intend to hold where Im at... got my NIC tweak in , and have had great performance , speed isnt everything , the thruput is , then lats... thats where my heads is.

has anyone seen the movie... "what the bleep do we know " ? just caught it last night... wow