Capturing 10GbE on a laptop

Hardware
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I do a lot of work on Wireshark and have an interest in Laptops that can capture 10GbE. All of my Wireshark work is done on Linux (generally Fedora, but also CentOS), but I use Wireshark on Windows 10 a lot because of the company I keep :slight_smile:

Last year I did some tests with my Lenovo P51 which has a Thunderbolt 3 connection and managed to capture at around 600MB/s, or a little under 60% of a 10GbE interface, with little packet drop (feeding into NVMe storage.)

Of course I was not using Wireshark for that. I used dumpcap on Windows, as I recall, and would use tcpdump on Linux.

I would really love to purchase a Linux laptop that can do what my P51 can, so can any Librem laptop handle such a workload?

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The Librem 14 has a integrated 1Gb ethernet adaptor, no 10Gb option. The librem 15v4 doesn’t have any RJ45 ethernet, the only option is to connect one through USB. USB has a 5 Gbit/s theoretical maximum
None of the Librem laptops (AFAIK) have Thunderbolt. See e.g. Librem15v4 USB-C for Thunderbolt 3 Data Transfer

So I don’t think so. Unless it’s possible to fit a 10Gbit ethernet adapter in the M.2 slot.

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what he needs is probably a 10 gig/s usb-c (the new revisions) adapter to 10 gig/s eth RJ-45 … i don’t know if that’s on the market yet … there are barely some high end motherboards that sport this 10 gig/s through the AQUANTIA integrated proprietary thingy …

i would rather take a FSF certified one if and when it becomes available …

where i live there is NO 10 gigabit/s ethernet contract offering with the ISP … at least not for any home adress that i know of …

no shit ? that’s unreal …

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Ah right! The Librem 14 page mentions USB 3.1, but not if it is gen1 or gen2 (apparently this makes the difference between 5Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s). If it’s the latter one could, in ideal conditions, minus USB framing overhead, capture a 10Gb ethernet connection. Provided that there’s such an adapter of course.

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i hate this nomenclature … so confusing (probably intentional)

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Yes it seems to be a marketing ploy mainly, at the expense of clarity.

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As you recommended, @realrichardsharpe should take a look at Thunderbolt 3 to 10 Gb Ethernet Adapter, like this one from IOCREST, but I didn’t check if this device might work well with PureOS. This is something that he needs to make sure even before buying it (if USB3.1 Type-C on L14 supports Gen 2 to get max. out of this box).

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That is what I managed to get.

I wanted to get more but was unable to do so.

Curiously, the Macs were able to deliver around 100MB/s on each GbE port, while the Windows boxes (Lenovo) were not able to deliver that much.

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I have two 10GbE to Thunderbolt 3 adapters.

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There is at least one other Linux Workstation/Laptop vendor that supplies laptops with Thunderbolt.

And there are some docking stations with Thunderbolt 3 support.

However, it seems Thunderbolt 3 is not a priority for Purism, and I can respect that.

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maybe this is why … < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Security_Vulnerabilities
better to invest in usb-4 (open-standard) … but 10gb/s is achievable on thunderbolt 1 (mini-dp) as well …
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Aliexpress link don’t differentiate in this particular case either:
• USB Typ-C und Thunderbolt™ 3 technologie: Einen port, um schließen sie sie alle.

I’m not sure but don’t think that Thunderbolt™ 3 port is requirement here, anyway you need to proof this by yourself.

EDIT: This QNA-UC5G1T USB 3.2 Gen 1 to 5GbE Adapter requires the Marvell® AQtion USB 3.1 Linux Driver (1.3.3) and you are already good to go.