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Comment by ltbarcly3 | Hacker News Reader

Ok is there a version for usb-c? Because that would be 10x or more faster and I have a usb-c port and a usb-c cable at all times.

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You can use USB4STREAM on linux if its USB4 https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Linux-USB4STREAM

Or thunderbolt-net/usb4net https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/thunderbolt.html#network...

True but you can skip the net stack completely if you just want to transfer data

Depends on the device, in principle if both have thunderbolt and you use a thunderbolt cable it should work. I've done it between 2 macbooks many times.

https://www.amazon.com/Hagibis-Ethernet-Portable-Thunderbolt...

Carry a couple USB-C to RJ-45 dongles ;)

What a clever idea. I carry an ethernet dongle but this one is just the male end and a female usb-c port, meaning your existing usb-c cable is useful and you don't need to carry an ethernet cable.

Oh. My. God. I thought you were just going to link a network dongle. "Yeah, I have a drawer of those". It never occurred to me that you could point it in the other direction.

I'm ordering a dozen. Okay, maybe 3. But still, those look amazing.

I have been using USB-C dongles like this for a hot minute now paired with a nice retractable travel cable. I have a couple of these, an HDMI male one, a DisplayPort male one - I can plug basically into any hotel TV or monitor in my travels and run a laptop, phone, whatever off of the cables in my bag for charging, data, or video.

Yeah, I discovered the same concept for HDMI and USB C->A. The HDMI one is especially useful.

It'd be super handy to have a wired failsafe while traveling without dragging an ethernet cable around for no reason.

Me too, I always have a dongle and an ethernet cable just in case but this removes the need for a cable (I always have 2+ usb-c cables). I've also just found something similar for HDMI, also removing the need to carry an HDMI cable. Trying to think of more things, not sure why I didn't think of searching for these before because I have made something similar for the console serial port connector for raspberry pi and Jetson boards.

There is, if said USB-C ports are both Thunderbolt 3+ or USB4. Thunderbolt will create a ad-hoc 10G network device between two hosts.

If one of the devices support DRD (OTG), but unless one of them is an ARM device, chances are slim.

Could a smartphone sit between 2 regular laptops to achieve this with 3 USB cables and a hub ?

You would need a USB hub that could turn a USB device into two USB device ports, which I don't think exists. (hubs are essentially only a host-side thing).

With USB-C this is a lot more likely, the main issue is going to be software support (Decent chance you could hack something up if one of the devices is running linux. No idea if anything exists for windows).

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