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I heard we can connect Raspberry pi to laptop or PC Or Tv through LAN(Coaxial cable) and UART(serial to USB converter). Which one is gives better performance,speed(data rate). Instead of these two,is there any other mode of connection there? and also suggest me the power cable name?

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  • The USB ports and Ethernet port share the same controller, so that introduces a maximum speed right away. I suggest for controlling a Pi over a network to use Ethernet.
    – Darth Vader
    Jun 9, 2016 at 15:35
  • same controller means..
    – Sri Ram
    Jun 9, 2016 at 15:39
  • 'Same controller' just means there's a shared component that both the USB and ethernet circuits use. That component has a maximum capacity for data throughput. Pushing data through either pathway uses some of the capacity, reducing the total amount available - if the maximum is 30MB/s, and the USB pipeline uses 5MB/s, then there's only 25MB/s left for the ethernet pipeline.
    – goobering
    Jun 9, 2016 at 16:02
  • thank you!! what about power cable?! Suggest me best one..
    – Sri Ram
    Jun 9, 2016 at 16:58

1 Answer 1

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The best connection you are going to get from a pi to anything is via USB, but that does not include normative peer-to-peer network connections (unless you get, e.g., a gigabit ethernet adapter). As Darth Vader points out, the USB and the ethernet jack share a bus, but the top speed of the USB side of things is much higher than the top speed of the ethernet side of things.

The ethernet jack is the second fastest and is capable of a normal, network connection. In theory most wifi adapters are potentially faster, but in practice this is unlikely to be the case. However, connection via wifi on a LAN can be roughly on par with connection via ethernet on a LAN.

A direct connection using an ethernet cable may be faster, but I do not think substantially so -- it may simply be more convenient, since you don't need a LAN, intermediate router, etc.

After two or threes years using B/B+/2B models, in practice I would say the USB tops out around 30 MB/s and the ethernet may do 10 MB/s in bursts but is more likely to sustain 6-8 on average, given no other bottlenecks.

UART(serial to USB converter)

You can reliably get 1 Mbps (i.e., 125 KB/s) duplex connections using the UART, but this is much slower than normal networking.

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  • Thank you what about power cable?! Suggest me best one.
    – Sri Ram
    Jun 9, 2016 at 17:05
  • For powering the Pi I suggest going with an official Raspberry Pi power supply.
    – Darth Vader
    Jun 9, 2016 at 17:16

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