USB to Ethernet Adapters

[StuartR]

Hi All:

First time poster here.  I did try to search the forum first, but my lack of skills here may have found me at a loss in finding the answer to this question despite its presence here.  I'm sorry if that is the case.

Given the way JamKazam is designed with respect to attempts at eliminating as much latency as possible, I completely understand the recommended use of a wired cable connections to the internet versus WiFi when using JamKazam.

The problem for me is that PC laptop manufacturers, in their effort to make designs thinner, seem to be doing away with providing an ethernet (i.e. RJ45) port standard.

Accordingly, I was wondering if anyone could speak to their ability to use, for example, USB adapters that provide an RJ45 female plug and the potential for latency that such, I've read, slower hard wired connections provide.

It's my understanding that even USB 3.0 ports not only don't compare to ethernet speeds, but that there is more that needs to go on within the machine to translate signals using USB than with an ethernet port, on top of what I've read about how USB ports within a PC compete with each other for a processor's "attention"  ...certainly a relevant concern given that we run JamKazam microphones through USB ports as well.

Any guidance/success stories--other techniques that people have used to deal with this issue would be greatly appreciated, and what type of USB port (e.g. USB, USB 2, USB 3) was involved.  This BTW is not a Mac based question where things like Thunderbolt ports come into play.

Thanks.

No problems using a USB Ethernet adapter. You can do several things to make that connection even more reliable and slightly faster on a Windows platform. The first is to disable the ability of the hub that adapter is plugged into to turn itself off to save power. The second is to
reduce the overall network latency by disabling support for Nagle’s algorithm. 
That's a technique that combines network packets together to reduce the total network load. To do this however it needs to delay slightly before sending a packet to see if there are any others that it can be combined with and this introduces additional latency of most packets. 

But neither of these changes are really necessary because at the end of the day the Internet latency you'll likely encounter will be significantly larger than anything done by your local computer network adapter.