Ethernet to USB dongles

[HCHTech]

I picked up a 2-year old Dell XPS 13 ultrabook from a customer last month (he hated the keyboard so purchased a larger laptop). He gave it to me just for asking, so it was a pretty sweet deal. Later, I found the battery was starting to swell, which put pressure on the trouchpad and made the mouse buttons and a few of the keys not work reliably. One $75 battery later, I had a really nice field laptop. I even offered it back to him for the cost of the battery once I found the fault, but he had already gotten used to the new one.

Anyway, the point of this message is that this laptop doesn't have an ethernet port. It came with an Asus-branded USB dongle (no other information on the dongle - so it might be USB2 I guess). Yesterday was the first time I had used this - I was diagnosing some networking problems for a client. To my surprise, there is a HUGE speed penalty when you are using that connection. The client had a 150mbps internet connection, and I was able to get 120mbps over wireless, but only 30mbps when connected with an ethernet cable using the dongle. I got about 135mbps on the client's laptop with a real network port.

The XPS is running Windows 10, and the network connection was reporting gigabit. The USB ports are v3 (they have the "ss" logo) and I have the latest drivers for everything (I did a fresh reload when I got it).

Am I stuck with this speed limitation, or are there faster dongles? This would be the only downside to this laptop. Is anyone else using a dongle on a regular basis and getting better throughput?

 

[mikeroq]

Been selling these. Just took one out today plugged into a Dell that's just too slim.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BBD7NFU/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Sounds like you have a USB 2.0 one.

 

[fencepost]

30mbps would be around the theoretical max for USB2 IIRC.

 

[HCHTech]

Ok, perfect. Just ordered a USB3 dongle. Thx!

 

[glricht]

Been selling these. Just took one out today plugged into a Dell that's just too slim.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BBD7NFU/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

We've been using these too. In fact, since we're an onsite-only business, we've used these for some of our residential clients whose LAN port got nailed by a power surge. A lot faster, simpler and cheaper than trying to carry around an inventory of parts to install an internal port.

 

[SAFCasper]

30mbps would be around the theoretical max for USB2 IIRC.

USB2 is actually quite a bit higher at 480mbps maximum (or 60MB/s). Still recommend replacing the dongle as it's clearly at fault, but theoretically USB2 shouldn't have any bandwidth issues with a 150mbps connection. Probably just a poor quality dongle.

 

[fencepost]

Ah, I screwed up capitalizing, that'll teach me not to post in a hurry.

Still, per The Fount Of All Knowledge I Read On The Internet, "Due to bus access constraints, the effective throughput of the High Speed signaling rate is limited to 280 Mbit/s or 35 MB/s."

I very rarely deal with USB Ethernet connections, but I looked into that at one point in terms of flash drive speeds.

 

[HCHTech]

Received my Anker USB3 ethernet dongle today - throughput back where expected. I'd rather have a real port, but finding a good, light, fast field laptop has been a struggle. When I had this one fall into my lap, no way I wasn't going to try and make a go of it.

 

[mikeroq]

I'd rather have a real port, but finding a good, light, fast field laptop has been a struggle..

I have a Thinkpad T460. i5-6300u 256gb SSD 12gb ram. Thin and light enough for my needs. Has two batteries. I can go all day between the internal bridge battery and my other two. Ethernet built in Now tablet on other hand.....oh well USB-C/A dongle it is.