Inateck HBU3VL2-4 USB 3.0 Hub & HBU3VL3-4 Hub Review

Wired LAN Performance

PassMark PerformanceTest Suite

Passmark has a great network performance testing tool that allows me to set the test conditions and control both the server and client side of operations. I’ll be testing the network connection for a continuous period of 5 minutes, first with a fixed packet size of 16384 bytes and then with a variable packet size ranging from 32 to 16384 bytes. The charts below will show the maximum, average, and minimum speed recorded with the LAN being connected through the docking station as well as through the onboard LAN. This will give us a good comparison, if there is any performance impact from using the docking station over an onboard connection.

Fixed Block Size

To test the maximum throughput speed that a connection can handle, a fixed block size of 16384 Bytes is sent from the client to the server over a period of five minutes. The higher block size will allow the transfer rate to stay as high as possible – in the same way that large files transfer from one drive to another is quicker than lots of small files of the same total size.

Variable Packet Size

In a real world situation, the blocks of data that pass through a network adaptor are not of the same size each time, so to give a more realistic impression of how an adaptor performs, the adaptor is once again tested for a period of five minutes. This time the block size will vary from 32 Bytes up to 16384 Bytes in increasing steps of 148.7 Bytes each time.

LAN Speed Tester

LAN Speed Tester is a very simple tool that pushes files in a given size to a target location, measuring the minimum, maximum and average throughput. A simple way to compare two connections with a static test.

Conclusion

We saw mixed results between the two benchmark apps where the Inateck USB hub even performed better than the onboard LAN at times. It’s safe to say that the Inateck HBU3VL3-4 USB hub with Ethernet does a great job and doesn’t feature any performance impact compared to the onboard. A surprising but great result.