Comment by VorpalWay
3 days ago
> Actual maximum data throughput is very hard to know. The only way to really "know" how much data can flow through a cable is with an expensive oscilloscope or cable tester.
Couldn't you just do a data transfer test over the cable and check the error rate? At least in theory, the controller might not report enough I guess.
Sure.
It's just like ethernet networks in this way: We can examine a cable and see if it works by plugging in some regular gear with it, and look at the success/error rate. Lots of people do this. It's an empirical way to see if a cable is good enough today, under present conditions, as a binary pass/fail state.
Or: We can examine a cable using specialized gear to characterize its performance, and then: We measure not just if the cable is good enough for today, but how close it is to the edge of acceptance it is. This allows a fantastic cable that is exceptionally excellent to be discerned from the ones that may be merely good-enough-under-present-conditions edge-cases.
From there, it may in fact be sane to suggest that the better-performing cable is likely to have better longevity as it inevitably degrades from human factors like...using the thing.
If you are just wanting "to use it", sure. If you are building a cable for a specific purpose, or want to actually ensure that it will work, use test equipment.
IT interconnect closet vs. air vehicle.
> If you are just wanting "to use it", sure.
Isn't that what most people here are really wanting? I don't imagine most people here are seriously wanting to know the exact extreme measurements, just "can this cable reasonably do what I need from it? Does it do what it claims on the label generally?"
People don't want "reasonably do". They want "resolutely do".
They don't say it like that, but: They sure do get grumpy when the Thunderbolt-connected display for their laptop shits the bed mid-afternoon on a Wednesday after a year, or the export for their recording session fails on a device they've done this with dozens of times before, or the cable connecting the camera they use to watch their cats no longer works: They get quite grumpy about these things, indeed.
So they want resoluteness, not reasonableness.
I know it's 2026 and many of us are used to using bots that are compulsively high-confidence liars.
But just go ahead and try to reason with someone about a local computer that fails tasks apparently-randomly. That's the makings of a bad scene. :)
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