# ThinkPad as router



## balanga (Aug 9, 2018)

I'd like to set up one of my ThinkPads as a router, and am wondering how much of a difference it  would make if I used a 1GB USB Ethernet adapter as opposed to a 1GB PCMCIA Ethernet adapter for the WAN connection. Is it possible to measure any difference in performance, and if so how would I measure it? Thankfully both devices are supported by FreeBSD, but my preference would be the PCMCIA card as it fits snugly and is unlikely to get knocked which the USB adapter might since it sticks out quite a bit.


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## SirDice (Aug 9, 2018)

The PCMCIA one should perform better. PCMCIA hooks directly into the PCI bus. USB (2.0) is limited to a max of 480 Mbit/s which simply means you will never be able to get full gigabit network speeds.

Note that speeds are typically indicated in bits per second, shorthand for bits is a lower case b. Upper case B is for bytes. So it's 1 Gb, not 1 GB.


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## balanga (Aug 10, 2018)

Oops... It was a typo...I did actually know that and I do call it Gigabit Lan.


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