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Comment by andrekandre | Hacker News Reader

probably really dumb question with a really obvious answer that i don’t see, but...

why not have a packetized protocol like ip over the cable and devices just go over that? wouldnt things like enumeration, identification, connect/disconnect, interleaving protocols and encryption be much simpler since it’s a known domain?

wouldn’t that be more “universal” than cramming usb2, usb super speed, pci-e, displayport (which afaicr also wraps a few things) etc over a single cable?

am i missing something or is this just a cost issue...?

[edit] slightly answering my own question: pci-e is a packetized protocol... so i guess cramming everything in is more backwards compatibility to get all the other connectors subsumed into a single cable...?

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You had a problem. You added TCP/IP and all its associated kludges like mDNS, SSL, etc. Now you have two problems!

Plus now your mouse has 2 gigabytes of RAM inside and burns your hand when you touch it. And your monitor has stuttery motion.

USB is packetized. But without those seperate modes of operation, every single adapter would need a microcontroller in it.

i see, makes more sense then... thanks!

Is that really a problem?

Imagine a world where the reliability of your devices significantly depends on how much you paid for your USB 3->4 adapter. Is that a better situation than what we have today?

It already does in terms of USB cables. Buy a wrong cable, and your device won't charge, or won't charge fast enough, or won't communicate. And you can't tell the good/correct cable from the bad ones visually.

The standard can have any number of optional modes to be implemented by devices. I don't care. What I want is for it to have one cable type. Because it's kind of a point of an universal port that people will use cables from one device with another.

It's unreasonable to expect one cable type, because the additional costs for cables that support very high data rates or very high power delivery are prohibitive for cheap devices that don't need those.

What they do need to do, though, is minimise the different cable options and make them easy to distinguish. My suggestion would have been to have a basic USB-C cable with exactly two optional designations: +FAST and +POWER. It's then easy enough for a device to say "this requires a USB-C+FAST cable" and consumers to then look for the same.

> What I want is for it to have one cable type

Cables have conflicting requirements:

-- high current requires thick wires and heat dissipation (if long cable). Possibly other safety-related requirements

-- high frequency wants more wire surface because of skin effect

-- flexibility and cost don't like either of the above.

I personally prefer to have a choice of a thin flexible cable when situation allows, and am ready to pay for it.

That'll be USB5

Screw it. We're going with USB6.

So FireWire...

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