alt Hacker NewsWow, good eye. You can see the PCB is designed to take either magnetics or series caps, but the caps would have to be DNP’ed.
I would actually be really angry to discover a USB Ethernet dongle I bought didn’t have magnetics built in.
Wow, good eye. You can see the PCB is designed to take either magnetics or series caps, but the caps would have to be DNP’ed.
I would actually be really angry to discover a USB Ethernet dongle I bought didn’t have magnetics built in.
There are cases when a USB Ethernet dongle without transformers can be dangerous.
For example, I use a USB Ethernet dongle to connect my router to a cable modem provided by the ISP.
The ground of the cable modem is at the potential of the shield of the coaxial cable, which comes from far away and the voltage difference between the coaxial cable and the ground of my apartment is big enough to give you a serious shock if you would touch an exposed metal part (normally there are no such exposed metal parts).
So it is essential for the USB Ethernet dongle to provide insulation between the incoming Ethernet cable and the USB port that is connected to the router, which is grounded at the home ground.