USB 4 networking hubs and questions therein

Framework Laptop 16
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1

I am considering getting 3 of the upcoming framework 16 mainboards and making something of a blade-server type of thing with them

(Tangent: I was originally thinking of the framework desktop for this but the price was a impossible and there were tradeoffs in the connectivity options, then the framework 16 announcement happened and the performance was in spitting distance and the connectivity is better and the cost per unit is cheaper and the ram can be swapped out)

Anyways the goal would be a proxmox cluster and external networking would be handled in traditional ways (ethernet) but I want the cluster traffic and state monitoring to be on a second high speed network. I read somewhere that modern usb-c 4 connections between 2 PC’s work and show up as a network connection… but a cluster for any sort of server needs a minimum of 3 for quorum reasons.

Thus I envision somthing like a USB-C hub with each unit plugged into that.
However this is an area of USB-C that is uncharted for me and I don’t know if this works, or can work with specific equipments or any the details therein.

So if anyone knows any information on the topic I would like to know what you know.

I should mention my interest in this is that usb 4 depending on implementation can do 40~80gbps although I hear there is some significant usb controller overhead but still a already present 10+gbps connection is ideal

2

The FW16 (and the desktop) have 2 USB4 port that run at @40gbps . (even if I did not see final test run that have more than ~20gbps with this Ethernet-USB4 connection.)

What have be test on Framework desktop is to use the 2 USB4 port for chain units (so 1 <=> 2 <=> 3 … <=> N <=> 1)
with 3 CM you have a complete interconnections with more you need to ask neighbor to forward your data to next.
If you loose more than 1 serveur you get 2 clusters…

I never see any USB4 “switch” and it may not work…
I have see som PCIE switch but realy hight cost.
If we can have PCIE per2per connection it may be the best, we may have 3x 64gbps connection and create more robust dual ring… but I did not know if it is possible :wink: