Where can I get USB 3.0 gigabit ethernet adapters? [virtualization]

[Brazilian Joe]

Hi all,

I am on a little virtualization project for our company. We currently have a server which hosts several virtual machines, but recently we had a problem with our UPS system, and our infrastructure went offline anyway. The UPS has been fixed since, but with current machines offering battery life of 6 hours and up, I think it would be cost-effective and sensible to move the basic structure to an ultraportable, and leave the more cpu-heavy virtual machines at the server.

For that I would need 3 things:
Ultraportable/notebook containing at least one Expresscard slot, and/or with USB 3.0 (check: Acer Ferrari F200 One)
USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter with at least 2 USB ports (check: can be found everywhere)
USB 3.0 Gigabit ethernet adapters (boo: nowhere to be found)

The missing link are precisely the USB 3.0 to gigabit ethernet adapters. Has anyone seen one of those around?

 

[sturm]

Why are you using usb for network connections to the server? Get a multi-port gigabit nic card for connectivity.

 

[Brazilian Joe]

The point is to use a 10-hour battery notebook in lieu of the server. No PCI Express, man.

Why a notebook and not a server? Just see how much a 10-hour UPS costs. The point is to offload the basic internet infrastructure (internet gateways, DNS cache, DHCP) to a low-cost infrastructure for home/soho network.

 

[Donuts82]

I'm also looking for a USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet dongle but just throwing an idea out there for Brazilian Joe, have you thought of a generator to provide backup power?

 

[Brazilian Joe]

From what I gather, a generator does not have the 'U' of UPS, burns fuel, takes up a big amount of real estate, thus would require a permit to store fuel on a commercial building, and would not have much of a cost difference from a expensive UPS with 10 hours of battery.

It's a project geared to a Home/SOHO installation, thus I am striving for the lowest possible cost.
That's why I am considering the Ferrari F200 with an aftermarket battery, or some other CULV notebook which comes with, or can be upgraded to, a 10-hour+ battery. And has an ExpressCard slot.

 

[gtvr]

Why do you need to run ethernet off of USB? Haven't looked, but maybe a laptop with 2 gbe ports? You could even run everything off of 1 port probably.

 

[Brazilian Joe]

Never seen a notebook with 2 Gbe ports, but I bet those would be the big ones, with much shorter battery life. I am looking for a system which can go through at least the whole workday (10hour+) should the need arise.

Plus, The office I am working on this solution for has 2 internet connections, one for the people traffic and another for the server. that asks for 3 ethernet ports total: 1 for the wireless AP (integrated), plus 2 ADSL on 2 USB adapters.

 

[red2k]

Hi all,

I am on a little virtualization project for our company. We currently have a server which hosts several virtual machines, but recently we had a problem with our UPS system, and our infrastructure went offline anyway. The UPS has been fixed since, but with current machines offering battery life of 6 hours and up, I think it would be cost-effective and sensible to move the basic structure to an ultraportable, and leave the more cpu-heavy virtual machines at the server.

For that I would need 3 things:
Ultraportable/notebook containing at least one Expresscard slot, and/or with USB 3.0 (check: Acer Ferrari F200 One)
USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter with at least 2 USB ports (check: can be found everywhere)
USB 3.0 Gigabit ethernet adapters (boo: nowhere to be found)

The missing link are precisely the USB 3.0 to gigabit ethernet adapters. Has anyone seen one of those around?

I too would like to see this adapter as I also need one as well, anyone know if any exsist yet?

 

[562620]

sing sing sing

 

[Emerald]

a Gigabit network card will only transfer 125 MB/s; therefore, a USB 2.0 will due fine since it can transfer 400 MB/s.

USB 3.0 adapters are not necessary as of yet, maybe they will come out when 10 Gb networks are more common.

 

[pelicansnout]

Just be sure your clients never find out your infrastructure does not include a UPS. Virtualization of backup is not possible. At some point, you actually have to use a real machine. When a real cloud becomes saturated with droplets, what happens? Yes, it falls down and goes on the ground. Buy a UPS.. call 1-800-Liebert, we'll hook you up. Capacity and time are 2 very different aspects, I can get you a 20 hour ups with little load.. or a server room of load for 10 min...

 

[red2k]

a Gigabit network card will only transfer 125 MB/s; therefore, a USB 2.0 will due fine since it can transfer 400 MB/s.

USB 3.0 adapters are not necessary as of yet, maybe they will come out when 10 Gb networks are more common.

Sorry to burst the bubble here man but you better check your facts before posting. A "USB 2.0 gigabit adapter" can have a "gigabit" interface on them for a "gigabit connection" but it's not running at a gigabit and never will. They make them this way for compatibility only. A gigabit = 125 megaBYTES a sec. in other words when you talk about anything in BITS you divide the number by 8 to figure out how many actual BYTES it really is...

So in any case the USB 2.0 spec only does 480 megaBITS at the highest, and if you divide the number by 8 you get 60 megaBYTES. So now that you know USB 2.0 can only transfer a whopping 60 MB's a second, you can see that it is only less than half the speed of a gigabit connection (plus USB 2.0 NEVER reaches the 60 MB mark and never will, it's just the theoretical speed that it can/might achieve). This in turn means that you would need something faster to achieve the gigabit speed, hence why in my case, along with maybe a few others, may need a USB 3.0 gigabit adapter to get the real world speed of 125 MB a sec.

So just an overview:

USB 2.0 = 480 Mb (Megabits/480 Mbps) = 60 MB (Megabytes/MBps)

Gigabit ethernet = 1000 Mb (Megabits/1 Gbps) = 125 MB (Megabytes/MBps)

USB 3.0 = 4800 Mb (Megabits/4.8 Gbps) = 600 MB (Megabytes/MBps)

As you can see if there is a USB 3.0 gigabit adapter out there (or if one ever gets developed) it would only then be cable of TRUE gigabit speeds and with tons of headroom to spare since USB 3.0 does a crazy 600 MB/s (theoretical) speed! That's crazy speed that isn't needed to simpley get 125 MB/s that gigabit offers but is needed in the end for TRUE REAL WORLD gigabit speed on the network (funny I say that cuz even then, gigabit connections never reach the full speed on a network anyway lol).

I think in your case, in the end, your just getting your "Megabits" and "Megabytes" mixed up and confused which is a very common mistake by alot of users. Just remember when you see something say eg: 1000Mb <- that means MegaBIT. Another example is 1000MB <- that means MegaBYTE. You see the "Mb" and the "MB"? The small "b" stands for BITS and the large "B" stands for BYTES which is a huge difference since there's 8 BITS in one BYTE.

Just one more quick overview:

1000 Mb (Megabits) = 1 Gigabit = 125 MB (Megabytes)

1000 MB (Megabytes) = 1 Gigabyte (which is NOT the same as a GigaBIT)

So you got it now? Hope so, cuz otherwise I could copy and paste the Wiki's for all USB specs and what exactly BITS and BYTES mean.. But I'm sure that's not needed now since I just gave you the whole lesson in this post

P.S. I ask again; Does anyone know if any USB 3.0 to Gigabit adapters exist yet? Anyone? I actually need the speed on my setup, plus it would be good to have for future-proofing/testing

 

[rand_79]

if 2 are going to adsl why do you need gigabit?

 

[palladin9479]

Ok stop, why are we running virtual machines on a notebook. If its because you believe that it will provide you with 10hr battery life then your very VERY wrong.

Some notebooks can provide that kind of battery life by under-clocking the CPU and turning off as many components as possible, and even then the CPU is spending most of its time in idle spinning NOP instructions. The moment you load up that notebook with VM's your battery expectancy goes down into 30 min to 1hr time frame.

Even using a VMware ESXi type install (very thin host OS providing vm services) running a couple VM's all going full tilt will sap your battery in under an hour. Battery technology doesn't change going from a big UPS to a small laptop, its still the same. The UPS would actually be more efficient as battery efficiency scales better the larger they become.

 

[Brazilian Joe]

The whole point here is to have an inexpensive setup for a SOHO which can make the internet hold up in the event of a blackout as long as possible, spending as little as possible. It must also have a low physical footprint, i.e. take up little physical space.

It's an exercise in geekery/hackerdom for "entertainment and good-enough practices and purposes". It does not attempt to be a bulletproof solution for the enterprise.

Virtual Machine technology has come a long way, and virtual machines only consume the resources they need. Just because you have allocated all your cpus do VMs it does not mean they will run at 100% all the time. Even if you are torrenting I don't think you can saturate the CPUs with networking unless your internet is 100Mbps (but I am guesstimating without data in this one). Here in Brazil you can't realistically expect more than 15Mbps at home or a SOHO currently, so the machine won't really take a heavy load, the internet is the bottleneck.

Even if the notebook battery cannot give the full 10 hours target, it will still be a reasonable pack of juice, and the notebook can be plugged to a smaller UPS as well. Notebook hardware also sucks up less juice than desktop-class hardware, so it's another win towards low-cost. The recently launched Brazos platform may even pack enough processing power to this job (I don't believe in the power of the Atom for this).

USB 3.0 ExpressCards are available by the dime and dozen, I just have to find the gigabit usb 3.0 cards now, to attempt this build.

 

[palladin9479]

Umm no, just no. Notebooks battery's are long life because of some special secret ingredient they put in them. Their the same as any other battery. Its the notebook itself that cause's the battery to last longer, usually by using a low power CPU in an under-clocked state with limited memory spin down HDD's and powered off Ethernet ports and USB ports. I've done exactly what your talking about in a lab, putting VM's on a notebook then removing the power cord. It lasted less then 30 min before throwing up the warning that it was going to shut down soon. Your situation will be worse because your actually expecting this thing to provide services in that unpowered state where as we just wanted to see how long it would last.

And WTF kind of services are you planning to run from a fcking netbook? With that quoted "10hr" lifespan your almost certainly talking about some atom based 1gb, 4500rpm notebook. Are you trying to do DNS / AD? When you say "internet up as long as possible" are you talking about using this netbook as a network gateway device? A small semi-cheap SOHO router ($100 ~ 200 range is perfect) plugged into a small UPS would last 5~10 times longer then any netbook by virtue of the HW involved.

The "speed" of the internet has absolutely ~zero~ to do with expected power draw. That is mostly determined by CPU speed, HDD spindle speed and the power to keep the memory / network subsystems working. Netbooks get long battery life by turning those things off, so unless your expected to "provide services" without actually talking to anything, your going to be in for a big disappointment.

 

[Stobrawa]

Seriously people. The question is essentially 'does anyone know where to find a gigabit ethernet -> usb 3.0 bridge?' I don't think anyone cares if you think that using a laptop for a server is a bad idea or not, it's not in _ANY_WAY_ an answer to the question.

The poster added detail when, maybe, they should not have -- Let's pretend they simply just asked for a usb 3.0 -> gbe adapter and nothing else. Does anyone actually have any help?

 

[red2k]

I second that Stobrawa; Anyone know if these adapters exist? ANYONE???

 

[c911darkwolf]

@Stobrawa
As it's a little off topic, It can save him $600 in a failed project if his ultimate goal cannot be achieved by laptop. Did you stop to consider the project as a whole?

@Paladin
Your right.. hate it when people use "fking" but other then that you statement is correct.

@Joe
You need to reconsider your laptop idea. Laptops running 10 hrs is "optimal" enviroments. Also keep in mind that laptop batteries fade over time so your 10 hr solution today is a 9hr solution next year and so on... Then concern i have for your project is the Data speed of the HD. The reason we have Servers instead of personal PC's handling these jobs is their efficient, Speed, and reliability.

Things i might consider for this project

1. Will a stardard HD be enough throughput once data access request that it won't slow down the network? As well as how much of this data is Read vs Write?

2. How many users will access this dual core laptop?

3. Is half the posted battery life acceptable?



Maybe a Desktop with a UPS attached might be a better route.

1. Easier to upgrade/expand
2. More reliable
3. better heat consuption.


Fact of the matter is, if you buy a laptop expecting the 10hr battery life it post, you will be disappointed greatly. More use and/or users less battery life. I have a net book that suppose to last 6 hours. With wifi turned off and working on a lite version of linux (more efficient then win/mac) and a lite version of office i can get about 5 1/2 hours.

This may not be what you want to hear, but working on a server you have to keep in mind that you need a long term solution, not a bunch of short term ones. That laptop is going to burn through that battery quickly. You don't want to blow hundreds of dollars into a project that comes up short as it will make you look bad. Not saying its a Fail project, just consider it a bit more. The end decision is yours.

 

[c911darkwolf]

http://www.amazon.com/Crest-Gigabit-Ethernet-ExpressCard-SY-EXP24006/dp/accessories/B003ULP9Q6

Card version


didn't find a USB 3.0 to Gig Ethernet connector

 

[Brazilian Joe]

Thanks to all contributors, but some are missing the point. I never said I want to run advanced web services such as webservers and email on the notebook.

I only want to have essential infrastructure - wireless, routing, gateway - running for as long as possible in the event of an extended power loss (and short ones).

I will state one more time: this is an exercise in geekery, with perhaps some use at home or a SOHO setup.

I have my gateways running on VMs and they seldom consume more than 1% CPU. Other machines consume a bit more, such as the mail server, but even the file server consumes very little CPU. Having the processes bound by a low-ceiling bottleneck, be it the ADSL or the HDD, limit the cpu cycles/power consumption of VMs to a minimum. Other services are not candidates for this setup.

A notebook with a 10-hour battery rating is usually optimistic, and anything but notepad with minimum brightness already take a toll on battery life, I am well aware of that. Still, a laptop running in the intended fashion will run with the screen off for 99.9% of the time, which already reduces consumption. Even if I can get a 5-hour battery life in practice it would be already considered a success.

Again, cost must be kept at a minimum. Server brass + Enterprise UPS = lots of $$$ obamas $$$, thus not viable. Any dinky consumer-level UPS can greatly extend the battery life of a notebook with a reasonable cost, or one of those external batteries such as the HyperMac External Battery would also do a good job on extended battery life at the fraction of the upfront+maintenance cost of a UPS. Been there, done that.

So, if you think I am a brain-damaged guy trying to hammer a nail with a banana, I appreciate your concern, but your opinion is not strictly necessary on this thread, unless you can actually contribute to this project within the stated constraints.

Thank you all and Tom's Hardware for providing the forum.

 

[palladin9479]

"wireless, routing, gateway"

"Again, cost must be kept at a minimum."

What your asking for is not PC or even x86 necessary hardware. Just buy an upper end $200 USD SOHO Router / Gateway device and hook it to a cheap UPS. It will last in excess of 12 to 18 hrs minimum due to ridiculously low power consumption.

"A notebook with a 10-hour battery rating is usually optimistic,"
This is a lie, stop lieing to yourself. This is the only serious issue I have with your proposal, that you keep perpetuating a lie. If the netbook (what your really talking about) has a posted 10hr life, then you will get 5hrs max and more likely 2hrs actual. Posted times are with all subsystems shutdown or running in a minimal state, aka OFF. Those subsystems include HDD / PCIe / PCI / Ethernet / Video / USB. That means it SHUTS DOWN that USB network adapter your wanting to buy.

Now please stop trying to play enterprise admin, your obviously neither and are instead doing something at your home while trying to sound cool. You gave that away when you said gateways on VM which violates one of the core concepts of network security. Gateways should be external devices running locked down OS's typically of the Unix variety or a special OS like Cisco IOS. This reduces your network profile and restricts entry points for an external attacker.

So let's just cut to the chase, you want to know about a USB 1Gbps adapter so you can turn your home netbook into an internet gateway that can survive if your house loses power. That is possible but you'd be spending large amounts of money for a complicated solution looking for a problem. Cheaper and more efficient solution is to run a DD-WRT based router with a cheap APC home UPS. Considering that SOHO routers use less power then a light bulb it will last at least an order of magnitude longer then any netbook based solution imaginable, while being more secure.

 

[Brazilian Joe]

Hey man, chill out.

Calling other liars - or that I am 'playing enterprise admin' - is just plain rude.

You are being consistently offensive on your remarks and just adding noise to the conversation.

You didn't even understand what I said about a 10-hour battery life being optimistic. Your mind played tricks on you, because you are dead set into trying to prove me wrong.

This is not a competition, neither a discussion on the security implications of virtualized networking. I could argue about virtualization security all day long, that Cisco is in bed with VMWare in this and whatnot, but this would sidetrack my objective with this thread.

I just want to have fun with this little project, stop trying to spoil my lemonade.

 

[palladin9479]

Your OP,

I am on a little virtualization project for our company. We currently have a server which hosts several virtual machines, but recently we had a problem with our UPS system, and our infrastructure went offline anyway. The UPS has been fixed since, but with current machines offering battery life of 6 hours and up, I think it would be cost-effective and sensible to move the basic structure to an ultraportable, and leave the more cpu-heavy virtual machines at the server.

For that I would need 3 things:
Ultraportable/notebook containing at least one Expresscard slot, and/or with USB 3.0 (check: Acer Ferrari F200 One)
USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter with at least 2 USB ports (check: can be found everywhere)
USB 3.0 Gigabit ethernet adapters (boo: nowhere to be found)

The missing link are precisely the USB 3.0 to gigabit ethernet adapters. Has anyone seen one of those around?

Now out of that we can extract a few bits of information,

I am on a little virtualization project for our company. We currently have a server which hosts several virtual machines, but recently we had a problem with our UPS system, and our infrastructure went offline anyway.

Ok some sort of virtualization project for your company, thus denoting the enterprise aspect. Your company is having a problem, their current UPS solution is not working for them and they need a better / more optimal solution. Again this is enterprise territory as home users simply do not require what we're about to be discussion.

The UPS has been fixed since, but with current machines offering battery life of 6 hours and up, I think it would be cost-effective and sensible to move the basic structure to an ultraportable, and leave the more cpu-heavy virtual machines at the server.

You were good until this line,

I think it would be cost-effective and sensible to move the basic structure to an ultraportable

which got every single enterprise grade administrator who read this fired up. What you just mentioned was moving critical infrastructure to a cheap netbook. Then this entire article you try to pawn it off like that netbook's battery will last "10 ours" or even "6 hours" while every single person with experience is telling you "more like 30 min". And thus you just downgrades from your companies "6 hour" solution to your own "30 min" solution. You then want to move the network adapter to a USB interface, a bus that is fine for quick connect / disconnect for home stuff but that is horrible for bandwidth efficiency and unreliable at best. So now your "critical services" are running with a 30 min battery time on a USB network adapter, and your company is supposed to rely on this for their money making business.

You then get defensive when every single person tells you to stop what your trying to do because it doesn't work that way, all while harping about some magical "10 hour" batter life. You keep lying about the 10-hours because we all know its 6 at best while watching a movie and 30 min while under constant load (where it can't shut down any subsystem). Then out of the woodwork's you mention what your "critical infrastructure services" are, a gateway device. This immediately will set off the BS detector on any seasoned administrator. You virtualize internal security devices, you never ever virtualize external facing network devices that one side is your perimeter. This is from both VM and Cisco btw and is a serious security flaw. Instead you would have a real SPI network firewall device (not a SOHO router) connected to your perimeter with the internal facing connection to the perimeter router. Then past the router you can virtualize to your hearts content.

ISP Perimiter -> FW -> Router -> Internal Network

There are a few alternative setups but they all have the same core concept, separation of untrusted network traffic at layer one from trusted infrastructure. Having your ISP's line directly connected to a USB'd network port on a netbook running a VM'd gateway distro doesn't fit that description. Any company IT manager would laugh if someone tried to purpose that, and likely fire anyone that tried to actually do it for real. You don't "have fun" with your companies business money, anyone who's actually worked in IT for a living will tell you this.

Which leads me to the conclusion that there is no company nor any enterprise that needs a solution. Your at your home thinking that this would be a good idea and what to try it out. You made up that entire story just to get a recommendation on a USB 1Gbps network adapter. You should of just asked about one without the BS back story, we would of directed you to the proper components. If your doing this at home go ahead and have fun, it'll be a good learning experience, although a SOHO router + cheap (relatively) APC UPS will likely last longer / work better. Still no learning experience should be denied.

In short, please do not come on these forums and BS with us. This forum is chock full of enterprise level IT admins / managers along with tons of experienced hobbyists and enthusiasts. Our BS detectors are keen.

 

[xandercage]

I have done several searches online over the past few months for the same kind of adapter Joe is looking for - not at all for the kind of complexity that I would think might be involved (and apparently so...) in his experiment, but rather solely to instantly make any 80-100+MB/s SATA/eSATA(-p/-pd)/USB 3.0 -connectable drive of mine that I want to into a network-accessible drive at full Gigabit speeds without having to keep a bunch of overpriced NAS enclosures on-hand and un/installing drives over and over again.

Unless there are 'pre-release' generics I haven't successfully searched for yet somewhere out on the eBay/Meritline/Monoprice-type merchants available to me (... and there aren't), then the real, honest-to-God answer to the original question is that no-such well-known device exists yet in the US retail market. Joe is obviously talking about ops. in Brazil, so his ability to easily have the newest products shipped internationally to him may very well differ - I have absolutely no idea - but the point is that there's a 99.9% chance you will not have somebody hopping onto this thread any time in the next month or so bragging about their new USB 3.0-->gig ethernet adapter. Unless they're manufacturing reps on their way to the next CES-type event & about to make a product announcement.

Joe, if this incredible digression hasn't diminished your enthusiasm for the experiment, then, completely blind to your timeline and even more ignorant of your reqs & the actual capabilities of the connection types, I would mention the fact that for storage-related purposes/options, Power-eSATA (eSATAp/eSATApd) is an excellent alternative to USB 3.0 (one that I prefer, actually - because you can actually boot from it now, with no chipset integration waiting required like with USB 3.0) for which there are plenty of forthcoming or already-existing 'devices' potentially serving as your network adapter and for which there are plenty of laptop-native or Expresscard-based ports available for high-bandwidth data transfer OF SOME KIND. Nothing, though, like a truly-portable 'dongle' to carry around in your pocket, and as I doubt that anything eSATA-based would serve your needs anyway, that's probably off-topic - my apologies. Keep Googling over the next few months and I'm sure you'll find mention of something more-relevant coming to market soon.

Through my above-mentioned searches, I have stumbled upon this thread several times, and every time I pull it up, I've been more and more surprised/disturbed by how... 'off'... people's responses, or even approaches to responding, have been. I'm admittedly "IT-stupid" and still learning (with a whole, whole lot left to go), but the experts of the world - who, regardless, are certainly needed and highly-appreciated in the online 'free help' resource pool - just need to recognize that some people like me, and possibly like Joe, approach learning in different ways, and that one of those ways is using "experimentation" to maintain interest in something long enough to learn why it will or won't work (hence the operative "experiment" word Joe used over and over again). There is absolutely no point in going after somebody for either taking a casual approach like that or for wanting to see their idea through to the end, even if others warned them along the way. All it does is discourage somebody from taking any interest at all or, at the very least, from coming back to this particular site in search of help. In the end, he's probably going to go out and buy a dongle once it comes out - even if only to have it for some/any other future use, when/if something with his experiment goes wrong - and then all that this thread would have accomplished was waste everyone's (particularly the expert's?) time.

Seems like well-knowing, direct answers to the question should come first - even if only as a simple courtesy - followed by the (ultimately) more-helpful suggestions for alternative solutions/improvements. Communication 101. But here's to hoping one of the fired-up enterprise-grade admins doesn't shred me to pieces vs spending that time instead on helping out other people somewhere else on this forum.