The Basics you should know : Ports — Part 1 (USB)
There are tens & hundreds of different types of general ports that are found on various electronic gadgets/computers, but there are few ports that are most frequently used, and in this part, you will get to know more about USB.
What is Port?
The Port provides the interface (the bridge between two devices or point of contact) between two devices for the communication. For example, we use Pendrive- it uses a USB port to communicate with the device it is connected to. In networking, you will find the concept of virtual ports, which has the same functionality as the hardware ports, only in networking it provides a port for the two software to communicate with each other which are or are not reside on the same device (in this case software are on different devices which are connected via WAN or LAN type of connection).
Different types of Ports
On electronic devices, we find many different types of ports. Each of these types has a different role and set of features to offer which again depends on the type of communication it provides. You will find many ports that look the same or similar to other ports around them (on Computers and/or other electronic gadgets). In the case of the same ports — either they are the same (e.g. USB) (to offer support for multiple devices simultaneously) or the same but with different versions of them(e.g USB 2.0, USB 3.0). On older computers, there used to be similar ports for similar or different applications (e.g. video output/display ports) as shown below:
As the technology was still evolving, for the same and similar applications different ports were designed and used to provide an interface for communication with different types of devices. Today, with having international standards and protocols we have general ports that support a variety of functionalities. For example, VGA became the most used port for displays, but this port supports only video signals, we had to use a different port to send audio signals (3.5 mm audio jack). But now, Audio+Video signals are transferred using the same port i.e. HDMI.
In this part of the story, I will share the details of the USB port and connectors.
It is important to know the difference between USB Type A, Type B and Type C & Thunderbolt ports. I will cover Type A, Type C and Thunderbolt only as Type B is not used a lot. Few devices where you will find Type B type of connectors are Printers, Cameras, Scanners, etc.
USB
Almost every cable that we use to transfer data or charge mobiles and other electronic gadgets are of type USB. USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. It is the most widely used port & an international standard for cables and many connectors. USB is used to transfer data & power supply. As USB is an international standard, it was developed to simplify and improve the interfacing of devices. USB can send a variety of data without the need of extra configuration. Almost every USB enabled devices are plug-and-play type(does not need additional settings before using).
Today in computers we see three different versions of USB —
Note: USB ports are backward compatible i.e. we can use USB 3.1 device with 2.0 port and vice versa, but the performance will vary.
USB 2.0
USB 2.0 port is found almost on every computers and laptops. It supports data transfer speed of upto 480 Mbits/s (60 MByte/s). USB 2.0 is primarily used to connect Keyboards, Controllers, Mice, Printers, Scanners, and many more. USB 2.0 is also used for Data transfer but the speed is limited for transferring large files compared to USB 3.0. Power supply is 500 mA(0.5 A) 2.5 Watts.
USB 3.0 & USB 3.1
The only difference between all these 3 types (2.0, 3.0 & 3.1) is the tongue(Generally are white/black for USB 2.0 & Blue for USB 3.0 and USB 3.1) of USB port and type of cable which controls the data transfer rate and power supply. USB 3.0 (Later named as USB 3.1 Gen 1) supports data transfer of upto 5 GBits/s (640 MByte/s) and power supply is upto 900 mA (0.9 A) 4.5 Watts & if used only for charging then it provides power supply upto 5 V/1.5 A 7.5 Watts. USB 3.1 (USB 3.1 Gen 2) supports data transfer speed of upto 10 GBits/s (1.25 GByte/s = 1280 MByte/s) and power supply support is of 5 V/20 V 0.5 A/1 A/1.5 A/3 A/5 A (upto) 100 Watts .
Note: All the mentioned speed are from on-paper specification. Actual data speed that we get is much slower. In my personal experience, USB 2.0 : 5 MByte/s to 10 MByte/s; USB 3.0 (USB 3.1 Gen 1) : 15 MByte/s to 100 MByte/s.
Type A
Type A was released in 1996 and it is the most widely used connector type. Today every laptop, almost every charger, and many electronic devices have a Type-A port. It is an international standard port and connector with a rectangular-shaped connector and port. You can see the shape in the image captioned ‘few types of ports‘. Data and power supply rates are the same as mentioned above (depends on the version).
Type C
This 24 pins standard connector was developed at the same time as USB 3.1 (Gen 2) by ‘USB Implementers Forum’ (USB-IF). It supports both data and power supply using a single cable. Wikipedia states that ‘A device with a Type-C connector does not necessarily implement USB, USB Power Delivery, or any Alternate Mode: the Type-C connector is common to several technologies while mandating only a few of them.’ One major advantage of Type C is that you won’t need to try and insert it, flip it over and then flip it over once more just to find the right orientation when trying to make a connection. Type C cables are capable of carrying a minimum of 3 A at 20 V 60 Watts & 5 A at 20 V, 100 W).
Note: Type A and Type C are just connectors/ports, their speed and performance depend on the USB versions they are built on. Type C is generally built on USB type 3.1 where Type A can be seen with all three mentioned version as Type A is being used since 1996.
Thunderbolt 3
Thunderbolt 3 port is mainly found on MacBook and other apple gadgets/devices. Thunderbolt 3 looks like Type C but there is a difference between them. Thunderbolt 3 supports the impressive data transfer speed of up to 40 Gbits/s (5120 MBytes/s = 5 GBytes/s). It can connect up to two 4K displays, outputting video and audio signal at the same time. It can charge another notebook up to 100 Watts with a single cable. One can plug an external Graphics card using this port to boost up the performance. Thunderbolt 3 is the beast compared to previous USB ports. Thunderbolt 3 is also backward compatible as Thunderbolt & Thunderbolt 2 products can be used with Thunderbolt 3 ports via an adapter.
For more details on Thunderbolt vs Type C watch this video
I hope you have enjoyed this story and found something new. If you have any suggestion or point, do comment below or get in touch. Thank You for reading .
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