Pinephone Pro Convergence Dock Ethernet performance with non-pro pinephone

[Matt2020]

Hi,

New here.

I have a PinePhone (1.2, I think; definitely not Pro).  I also have the original convergence dock.  

It works great, but the ethernet (verified with iperf3) is only getting 3-4M/s, where other devices on my network are at 1000M/s.  I know this old dock is only rated for 100M/s, but I was hoping to get closer to 100 than to 0 when using it!

Anyway, I'm considering buying the new one: https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pro...cking-bar/

However, I don't want to do that if the performance is still going to be so poor.  

Can anyone who has a non-Pro Pinephone and the new dock give me an idea of what their ethernet speed is?

Thanks!

[fxc]

Hi,

New here.

I have a PinePhone (1.2, I think; definitely not Pro).  I also have the original convergence dock.  

It works great, but the ethernet (verified with iperf3) is only getting 3-4M/s, where other devices on my network are at 1000M/s.  I know this old dock is only rated for 100M/s, but I was hoping to get closer to 100 than to 0 when using it!

Anyway, I'm considering buying the new one: https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pro...cking-bar/

However, I don't want to do that if the performance is still going to be so poor.  

Can anyone who has a non-Pro Pinephone and the new dock give me an idea of what their ethernet speed is?

Thanks!

You could also buy one from Ebay, Amazon and co., as the docks are just generic USB devices.

[Matt2020]

You could also buy one from Ebay, Amazon and co., as the docks are just generic USB devices.

Thanks, @fxc.

I was not just concerned about the quality of the dock; I was also concerned that the issue might be the Pinephone itself.  

Am I wasting money buying a dock that will still get poor speed regardless of the dock hardware?  

The dock I am using should get 100M, but is only getting 4M.  Is this common to all Pinephones?

[fxc]

You could also buy one from Ebay, Amazon and co., as the docks are just generic USB devices.

Thanks, @fxc.

I was not just concerned about the quality of the dock; I was also concerned that the issue might be the Pinephone itself.  

Am I wasting money buying a dock that will still get poor speed regardless of the dock hardware?  

The dock I am using should get 100M, but is only getting 4M.  Is this common to all Pinephones?

Can't answer on that, maybe other forum members can. I just know that the dock of the regular PinePhone is of a lower quality. But if you order a proper one from Amazon you could always try if it is better there and return it otherwise. IMO smarter than importing one from China and hoping for the best.

[zetabeta]

Hi,

New here.

I have a PinePhone (1.2, I think; definitely not Pro).  I also have the original convergence dock.  

It works great, but the ethernet (verified with iperf3) is only getting 3-4M/s, where other devices on my network are at 1000M/s.  I know this old dock is only rated for 100M/s, but I was hoping to get closer to 100 than to 0 when using it!

Anyway, I'm considering buying the new one: https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pro...cking-bar/

However, I don't want to do that if the performance is still going to be so poor.  

Can anyone who has a non-Pro Pinephone and the new dock give me an idea of what their ethernet speed is?

Thanks!

i tested pinephone regular and 100Mbit/s usb-dock, and works quite near to 100Mbit/s.

could it be possible that you had other connections active at the same time, like mobile or wifi. pinephone's default routes may not go trivially. networkmanager may prioritize wifi over ethernet. basically, disable others.

[Matt2020]

Thanks, @zetabeta.  I had already disabled wifi.

@fxc I took your advice and bought one on Amazon.

However, I am using sxmo, and it (Alpine Linux) does not seem to recognize the ethernet built into the hub/dock. 
It is an ASIX AX88179A.
I have no idea how to get it running.

I anticipate that I would not have had this problem with the PinePhone Pro Dock.  (I could be wrong.)
I was able to `cat /sys/kernel/debug/usb/devices` to see info on the device.

Any idea where I can look for how to get it rockin'?

Thanks!

---

UPDATE
I am seeing this, but it still seems to not work:

phone:~$ lsmod | sort | grep '\(usbnet\|ax88179\)'
ax88179_178a          28672  0
usbnet                28672  2 ax88179_178a,cdc_ether

[emsyr]

Hi,

New here.

I have a PinePhone (1.2, I think; definitely not Pro).  I also have the original convergence dock.  

It works great, but the ethernet (verified with iperf3) is only getting 3-4M/s, where other devices on my network are at 1000M/s.  I know this old dock is only rated for 100M/s, but I was hoping to get closer to 100 than to 0 when using it!

Anyway, I'm considering buying the new one: https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pro...cking-bar/

However, I don't want to do that if the performance is still going to be so poor.  

Can anyone who has a non-Pro Pinephone and the new dock give me an idea of what their ethernet speed is?

Thanks!

Hi. Have you tested your convergence dock on a device other than your PP, e.g. a laptop? You can see there if it works OK (at a speed close to 100Mb/s) and weather it is a defective dock or some other maybe software problem.

[Matt2020]

So, as a follow-up, I bought the new dock for my old pinephone after having no luck getting anything I bought on Amazon to work with sxmo/pmos/alpine/pinephone.  Driver issues are  not something I want to deal with.

I have a macbook pro (mbp) to test against, and I usually have it hardwired with a 1Gb/s dock (a dock).

So, I ran the following tests with both devices hardwired with brand new cat8 cables and a 1Gb router:
- pinephone (new dock) <- iperf3 -> mbp (a dock) = 5Mb/s
- mbp (a dock) speedtest  = 68.36 Mbit/s
- pinephone (new dock) speedtest = 5.15 Mbit/s

So, I then switched the pinephone to wifi:
- pinephone (wifi) speedtest = 54.49 Mbit/s

So, I then took the new dock and attached it to the macbook pro:
- mbp (new dock) speedtest = 101.51 Mbit/s
- pinephone (wifi) <- iperf3 -> mbp (new dock): 78.1 Mbits/sec

So, I'm really feeling like it is the USB port on the pinephone (or something in the software), as when I use wifi on the pinephone, it is 10x faster, and the new dongle is definitely fast when used on better computers (20x as on the pinephone).

I really wanted 1Gb/s!

What I really, really wanted was my pinephone in the keyboard case with the dock attached, running Gb speeds.  In other words, a tiny desktop computer. 
Ain't happening.

---

Thanks @emsyr . That was a good idea.

I tested my _old_ dock with my mbp, and it also gets around ~100Mb/s (much better than 5).

The issue now is whether the problem is software or the USB port on the pinephone.

If it is hardware, then that is that. I'm not buying the Pro version just to get around that.

If it is software, maybe I just need a different distribution? I guess I could try booting the multi-boot and trying them all out.

Anyway, thanks for your help!

[Zebulon Walton]

I really wanted 1Gb/s!

That's not going to happen. Despite the USB-C connector the Pinephone uses USB2 so the maximum theoretical throughput is 480 Mb/s, and you'll get less than that due to protocol overhead.

[Kevin Kofler]

But 5 Mbit/s is poor even by USB 2 standards.