Ports

Rinat Malik: 00:00:00

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Tech Talk, a podcast where Amit and I talk about various technology related topics. Today we're going to talk about ports. Now ports are something that all of you I would imagine would be familiar with. We use ports, different kinds of ports every day. In fact, you know, if you're watching us right now, in your computer, you are absolutely using ports to connect with your screen or at least you're powering your computer. And even if you're watching this on your phone, you're watching or listening on your phone, you have used a port to charge your phone. So absolutely, you know very familiar topic to talk about. But while familiar we are a lot of the times we don't think about the variety and the technological diversity that goes behind a particular topic. And that's what we want to explore today. All the different kinds of ports that are the purpose they have and the way some of them work, and you know, give you guys a general idea about what's happening behind the scenes, when you're using it, you know, without thinking about it, it's good to be aware. It's interesting to know and it's also fun to talk about. So yeah, let's, let's start what's your thought and thoughts on it?

Amit Sarkar: 00:01:22

So, I think when I mentioned this topic to you, Rinat, I actually wrote about it in my newsletter. And the reason I wanted to talk about this subject is my wife recently bought a laptop, and it's a Dell XPS 15 inch, and that laptop had three USB C ports. And I was thinking, Okay, how do you connect a mouse How do I connect a hard disk? Or how do I connect even a monitor? And that made me think and then I did some research, and then I thought, Okay, wow, it's not as simple as just okay. You buy a monitor and you connect, and there has been a lot of progression over the period of years to come to this standard. And recently, EU has passed a law asking all the companies to make sure that they use only USB C ports for charging any device. Okay, so that got me thinking and then I thought, okay, let's talk about these ports. But I think in today's topic, let's explore the hardware ports rather than software ports. So just for the benefit of everyone. We are going to talk to you about computer ports, or ports that are available on your laptop or a desktop machine. But those are physical ports. Now, every computer also runs an operating system and that operating system allows different software ports, and those ports are pre allocated or used by applications. So, suppose you have a browser a browser always connects on port AT 80, or port ATAT 8080. So that's very common for browsers to talk on a software port. So, it means a browser is using that port to communicate outside to the outside world. And similarly there are different ports for different applications. Some are standardized. So for a certain type of mail application, certain type of VPN applications, you use standard ports, and those are pre allocated from but for other applications, like for a torrent application, where you want to download a very big file, say the Linux operating system, which is about 20 gigabytes, or maybe even five gigabytes, and you want to download that for the uTorrent or for the BitTorrent protocol. You can use any random port so but it has to talk on that port to connect to the server and then download. So though that software ports, but today's topic is all about hardware ports, ports that you use regularly, but it has changed so much over the last decades that it's unrecognizable now, and it made me think and when I did my research, I was like so amazed like where we are currently. So that's why I wanted to explore this topic with Rinat today.

Rinat Malik: 00:04:12

Absolutely. I mean is amazing the transition they went through I mean it was such a hassle before when I don't know you know some of you might remember you know the old days of mobile phone when you had different charging ports for all the different kinds of phone like Nokia had one Samsung had a different one. BlackBerry had a different one and it was end to charge you needed a port but then to connect your phone to your computer, you needed a different people. And that was even more, you know, more of a hassle. But that's just one place where standardization have brought us you know, made our lives easier. But then again, you know, I think you're gonna touch upon it today about even computers and monitors and all the other computer peripherals how they have you know how it has been, you know, a lot more easier with standardization of ports and you know, different ports have different benefits and how do those ports work and you know, we see the two ends of the ports when we use them, but what's actually going inside how many wires and what are each of their tasks and what are their purpose? These are very interesting. Yeah, let's explore that now.

Amit Sarkar: 00:05:31

So yeah, so not absolutely. I think a lot has changed and there has been a drastic change in the way we have standardized things, especially on smartphones. When we started as you said there was different port for charging different ports for connecting to the computer or your laptop. And now it has been standardized so most of the phones on the in the Android world are now coming with a USBC so USBC is a type of port that uses the USB standard it follows the USB standards and that port is used for both data transfer as well as charging and you can connect external devices by the way on your what do you say on your smartphone like if you want to transfer photos from your smartphone to a USB, you can actually connect the USB with OTG connector and you can then directly transfer from your phone to the USB without actually going through the computer. So that's quite handy.

Rinat Malik: 00:06:32

And also, just on this topic as well. One of the other cool things your recent phones can do. I don't know if iPhone can or can't but I know that Android definitely can is that if you have a USB Dongle for your mouse and keyboard. You can put that connected to your phone and use mouse and keyboard as if it's a computer and then you know there will be a mouse appearing on your phone screen and you will type with a full-size keyboard. It's very cool and a lot of the times very convenient when you're trying to write a lot of things and you don't have access to a monitor or a desktop computer. I mean if you have even if you have a connection to a monitor, you can actually connect to your phone so you can see your whole phone screen on your on your computer on your monitor and use your keyboard and mouse and it's just it's just a computer. So, you're kind of carrying around a full desktop computer capability in your in your pocket. It's something very cool.

Amit Sarkar: 00:07:28

Absolutely. And I think that idea I mean it's very I mean it's good for a smartphone, but it's a different level when you start using a tablet. And I think tablet is where this has become very popular where you want to use a mouse and a keyboard and you dock it and then you start using it and it's crazy. So yeah, so that's, that's where you can use. So, and one of the reasons so why this is happening. I mean, let's explore why there is a standardization of ports. Things are becoming faster and things are becoming slimmer. So, I want to make things less bulky. I also want to make things less compact; I mean more compact. And in order for me to do that I need to reduce as much physical space as possible. Now if I connect a round connector for a charging cable, a USB port for data transfer mic, a 3.5 mm audio jack for connecting a headphone. I have three different types of ports already on my smartphone, how do I reduce the size so the physical size has to be reduced and that can only be possible if he tried to standardize everything through a single port. If you have a single port that's used for charging for data transfer for connecting devices for everything, then it just makes a life easier. And that is why the standardization has happened. And that is the reason why things are going in that direction. And smartphones are actually heading to a pointless world where they will not have any charging cable. Apple has already stopped shipping their charges with their phones. And some of the other Android manufacturers have already stopped shipping a charge of the phone. The idea is that you already have a charger so reuse it, but in the future because wireless charging is coming and maybe we can talk about it in some other topic in some other talk. But because of wireless charging, and once it becomes very, very powerful and efficient. You no longer need a physical charger to charge your device. You use wireless charging, that's the future. So, it means your phone will become even slimmer.

Rinat Malik: 00:09:45

Yeah, absolutely. I mean when you think about the amount of space that's been saved after like not having separate data cable power cable and audio cable it it's quite significant. And not just fine even in laptops nowadays people want slimmer and lighter laptop. And you know the more real estate you can make available for any of these portable devices, laptop phone, etc. The better but not just this even in desktop computing, right? I mean, the site of cable I don't think anyone likes a lot of unorganized cable here given that and, you know organizing it, it is possible but it's still it's still something if there was no cable to see or to organize, I think lives would be a lot easier and people would appreciate that a lot more and that's where we're hopefully heading but the same time there is the challenge of you know the data transfer speed. As we mentioned that even for power right, I mean, the future is wireless charging, yeah, that's all good and fine, but the fast charging that I have in my current phone, you know, an hour and 40 minutes and it's full 100% Charge and in first 10 minutes I get like 2020 30% charge from zero to 30%. Is that possible in wireless charging? I don't know or will it be become possible in future? That's something I guess we're gonna watch that space and find out.

Amit Sarkar: 00:11:12

Yeah, I think in terms of why when it comes to wireless charging, it's still very slow. But when it comes to speed charging over the phone, like my current Android phone, I have a OnePlus nine Pro and that phone can get charged from zero to 100 in about 30 minutes full charge. Well, it's very fast and some phones they can charge under 20 minutes. There are super charges but you have to use the charges that come with the phone. And that's one of the selling points for buying these phones that you can quickly charge your phone so but let's move away from smartphones and let's come to computers because that's where we started with.

Rinat Malik: 00:11:46

Let's talk about different types of ports and what they

Amit Sarkar: 00:11:50

Yeah. So, when we talk about computer ports, so initially we didn't have I mean there was laptops, but when we think about computers, we always think about a desktop we have a CPU, we have a monitor, we have a keyboard we have a mice mouse. So those are the standard things that you need and inside your CPU you will have your motherboard you will have your graphics card you will have your hard days you will have the memory so you'll have everything and I think we did a talk about it. Maybe we'll share that with this talk and we'll put a link to that. Talk where we talked about the different how to assemble your own computer and what to think about. But these are all the things that are there inside the CPU and now you want to connect your keyboard to the computer. So, there is a port. Earlier there used to be PS one port, okay. It's a serial port. I think parallel serial I can't remember the exact name but it's PS one. And then if you want to connect a mouse, you use a same similar port. There are different colors and they are round connectors round connectors with pins around connectors with pin. Every connector has a male and a female version. The male version is stripped off and the female version is an enclosure so the male version goes inside the female version. So that's the normal connector specification. So, whenever you try to connect there is a male version and a female version. So female versions are normally where you want to connect and male version is on devices where you want to connect it to something so like a pendrive I want to connect it to a computer so the pen drive will have a male connector and the computer will have a female connector. And similarly, the keyboard will have a male connector and the CPU will have a female connector. So that's the type of connector that we use. So, PS One connector and these are wired keyboards, we don't have Bluetooth yet these are all times. So, we have ps1 connectors for mouse and keyboard then we have the 3.5 mm jack to connect our headphone or a speaker. So, we can get a 3.5 mm or 3.1 channel or 4.1 5.1 channel speakers, so with speakers and sub woofers and you can connect that to your 3.5 mm jack and you can get audio. Then you have the VGA ports so VGA ports were used for connecting the CRT cathode ray tube or monitors that were originally built, and they were used to connect to the computer so you had VGA port it changed to DVI, so the data transfer increased. And then as we went along, we got better monitors, slimmer monitors and then the charging the connectors change. So VGA DVI, and then you want to connect your internet. So you have an Ethernet port. So that ethernet port is where you connect your LAN cable to the router. So that will give you the internet connection, then what else is left? And I think you will have a power so the CPU itself will have a power delivery and that power delivery a CPU normally will consume a lot of power because it's powering all your motherboard, RAM, hard disk etc. So, it consumes a lot of power, maybe 100 200 watts at that time. Currently, CPUs consume about 850 2000 words depending on what graphics card you have, and what kind of processor you have. So those things will need a port for delivering power to the CPU. And yeah, so those are all the different types of ports plus you will have a USB port, but later on. So those are the different types of ports that you could now see and these are physical ports that you can see you can connect devices and different types and there is a different port for connecting a printer as well. Okay,

Rinat Malik: 00:15:42

LPT 1 I remember LPD printer used to go like it was so difficult to get a printer to work, I think even now like interconnect or this and there was there used to be like in Windows 95 or 98 There used to be like a pop up that please check the LPT 1 port and I was really young at the time but that that just stuck with me the port

Amit Sarkar: 00:16:09

LPT one port for the printer as we move ahead, the keyboard and mouse they became a USB. So, the USB that we are familiar with is USB A so that's the USB A port, that's the standard port that's now been very popular any USB device. If you want to connect a keyboard or a mouse or even a pendrive that will have a USB A port and that you use to connect to your computer. So, you get rid of ps1 ports and you have USB ports to connect keyboard and mouse but you still have now when we started, we had analog monitors now we have digital monitors. So those monitors needed high data transfer in terms of video. Now one v one second video has 30 frames and each frame depending upon the pixel size will have a lot of data. So, suppose you have a video which is let's say 20 seconds. 22nd has 30 frames 22nd is about 600 frames 600 frames with that image. So, if each image is five MB 600 into five, that's 300 MB 600 into five that 3000 mb or three gigabytes of data transferred in 20 seconds that's a lot of data. That's fine. Yeah. So, so that's why you need a different type of port. I am just simplifying it. Of course, there are there are compression algorithms and there are many other things and maybe I'm not doing the math right. But that's why we need a separate port for connecting the monitor we normally don't use a USB port to connect a monitor to our computer, not when the error that I'm talking about when we moved the keyboard and mouse to this type of connector and the mouse. The monitors move to HDMI DisplayPort so those are the two main popular ports that became very popular DVI was there, but majority it was HDMI or DisplayPort DisplayPort is the most recent one. So that was the monitor. And then for the power it was still the same but on laptop, laptop, you had different ports. So, the laptop connectors again around one and those were very popular. And every manufacturer says Lenovo Dell Apple they had their own different charging cables so you're if you're if you change from a laptop to another you have to buy you will get the charging adapter, but then it means you have to keep maintaining so many different charging adapters and then you need different types of ports and Ethernet port is still standard. It's still not changed as we move along the USB type A port. Now we also get type B ports. So, type B ports, allows monitors to talk to laptops, and then you can plug in devices to your monitor. So, I have a type B port in my computer. And what I do is I connect my monitor to my laptop. My monitor can now and I'm on my monitor I can connect a mouse, I can connect my headphone, I can connect my keyboard to my monitor, but that because that monitor is connected to the computer, I can I can basically talk or use my keyboard as if it's connected to my computer but actually, I'm using the ports behind my monitor. So, the monitor that I have, it's a 24-inch Dell monitor and that has about six USB ports. So, I can connect six devices, but I need to use just one port to connect the monitor to the lab to my laptop. So, I use one port on my laptop but I get six extra ports from my monitor so that makes life easy. So that's type B. And then you had in USB type A and type B you had micro and mini and those were used for your smartphones. So, the micro a micro-b those were used for smartphones and portable hard disk so those were using different types of connectors. Now why different types of connectors for them and not for this. These devices. When you connect. Remember you are transferring so let's say your transfer, you're connecting the portable hard disk to your computer. When you connect. There are two things happening one you need to deliver power to your portable hard disk. So, it turns on and it can write data. And the second thing is you're transferring data either ways, so from the hard disk to your laptop or from your laptop to your hard disk. So, there is bi directional data transfer. So, you need one port for data transfer and one port for power delivery. Of course, it's low power because it's not a very big device. It needs low power. And that's why the shape would have two different like the connector will have two parts. One is a thin one and one is a thick one, sorry, wider one, narrow one and a wider one, both with the same thickness. And they used to go inside the hard disk. But on the other side it's a USB type A So basically with a type A connect any device on the other end.

Rinat Malik: 00:21:15

Yeah, family of USB it has a lot of branches, right so there's you know, micro-USB, there's many USB, there is I think there is another one in the middle as well. And then you mentioned that which is USB type, you know type A and then there is USBC that we recently seeing and even in the regular USB that has become like so popular over, you know, the past few years that we even had memes about you know, always trying to three times to, you know, for it to go through, and USBC kind of solves that problem because it would go both ways. But yeah, USB, by the way, USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. So, the bus connection so bus is basically a way to say the bandwidth of each of these, the connections port, not ports the bus is the bandwidth of each of the wires that are being connected. And serial bus you will see in a normal USB that if you if you look inside the port there you will see four, four sort of golden or silver sort of wires that are being connected. And those are in serial. So, I think that's why it's called a universal serial bus. And it's actually I mean, to be honest. Another thing to also look at is the mechanics behind the mechanical design of each of these ports, because that's something I mean you know, being a past mechanical engineer, I actually have some knowledge on this. Why when report is designed a lot of things are actually taken into account in terms of the actual physical design of it. and USB was so popular because it could the employers really hard, I mean, you have to think about you know, it's being used in a on a regular day to day basis. It's you know, going through a lot of reviews by a lot of people, not everyone but it should be able to withstand a certain level of you know, refuse. and USB was a design which was actually quite strong and it doesn't, you know, break down so easily. I mean, I think a lot of the times you'll see Apple's lightning force and other ones they do tear very easily with USB ones. You know, because of a good design, it's actually very good. And also, you could actually the square, the metal enclosure. If you get rid of it. You can still have a USB device with just the four wires coming out of it and still use it as a connection. device connection port. So that also enables even slimmer design of various sort of devices. So, so when someone is designing a port, they are also taking into account not only the you know the bi directional data paths for more power, power transfer, but also how sturdy it will be in years, you know, is used roughly and then nowadays, they also have to think about whether it can be somewhat waterproof as well because you know phones are becoming waterproof but they're not waterproof and they're charging is quite dangerous. But you know, sometimes you might want to connect not power delivery, but data transfer. And it's good to have in like a moist or humid environment. It's good to have that kind of safety. So that's something also they need to take into account and these are the things that they do think about when designing vaults and yeah, that's another thing to know about a lot of sort of mechanics or design mechanical design go into designing worlds,

Amit Sarkar: 00:25:10

I think Yeah. I think you explained it really well. I actually didn't think about the wear and tear but you're absolutely right because a USB port is used so many times you plug in and plug out devices so frequently, that it has to withstand the wear and tear of like 1000 or maybe a million. Plug the plug in plugging in and plugging out for any device. So yeah, the port is quite resilient that over a period of time I've been using my laptop for it's a 2014 laptop, so it's almost eight years old, and I'm still using it and I keep connecting and disconnecting the USB cable and it still works like a charm. So yes, you're right. And yes, the strips that are there that you can see on the USB pin that that is there inside. You can actually if you connect wires, you can actually talk to any other device. If you can't plug it in. So that's again one way which are not mentioned which is quite useful. And yes, again, Renard mentioned about the waterproof and I think most of the smartphones they have this IP rating, IP 68 So it's waterproof so if you say drop a phone in a swimming pool your phone will return on YouTube, you can watch a lot of videos where people actually dip it in a mug or a tub or even sometimes in a swimming pool. I know people who have taken underwater photographs with their iPhones and Samsung devices. So yeah, so you can actually the ports that are coming now on smartphones they are so good that you can actually shoot photo inside the water without water getting inside the phone. So the port has to be resilient to that as well. So yeah, I think a lot of consideration has to be made and USB the so let's move on. I'll come back to the connectors because there are so many other different types of ports as well. So, we covered a DI B, then we covered HDMI and then we covered DisplayPort. So, DisplayPort is an open standard so anyone can use if they want to. Of course, they need to get certified and same with SDI HDMI is through a closed standard. And you need to get certified. So, as we as we move ahead, so that's for monitor and that's for data transfer and that's for power delivery. We still have not yet reached we can power devices but very small devices. So unlike a pendrive, like us portable hard disk, etc. You still can't power a full laptop with a particular cable. So, then we conveyed type C and as you as you might have noticed I'm talking more about a USB so let's see why. Because it's universal as Renard mentioned Universal Serial Bus. So, we come to type C port now type C is reversible, it means you can connect the mail any direction up or down and it will still fit inside like a lightning. So lightning connector from Apple is also reversible so you can connect either side, and it will always fit in. But the problem with lightning port is that it only works with Apple devices. It's not available on any of the devices because it's a proprietary port. And a connector, but USB is open. So, it means anyone who wants to use the get the certification and they can start using it. The reason they need to get certification is they have to meet certain criteria’s in order to tell the customer what is the data transfer that they can support or what is the power delivery if they want to support anything. So, with USBC what happened is the data transfer and the power delivery could be delivered through a single port. But there is a catch USBC also comes with different versions. So, you might have heard USB three USB to USB 3.1 USB four is coming now what is this? How is that different from USB C and that's where the catches so that's the USB and then slowly Intel came up in collaboration with apple with their own type of Port called Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt in what in the Thunderbolt port. If you have the right connector, you can connect to 4k monitors Thunderbolt four, you can connect to 4k monitors through a single port. Imagine the amount of data that's being transferred, transferred through one single port and you can also do power delivery.

Rinat Malik: 00:29:42

So, a quick side note on this a Thunderbolt port, I think is a closed port as as you said. HDMI is also closer. The difference between open and closed is that you know if a company usually accompany not just a person who is you know, spent money on developed research and development and developed some of these cases so of course they patented so it's it becomes closed as if like no other small manufacturing company that wants to, they can't just start manufacturing HDMI or Thunderbolt ports even if they know exactly all the specification on how to etc. But they can't. But Thunderbolt, I think is very close to because they have to, they're not easy to get permission to manufacture either but in case of HDMI, I think the patient owner sort of just asked for one cent or something very minimal for every HDMI port that is being manufactured so then that that brings them quite a hefty sum, I think every month or a year. But yeah, that is something that you have to pay as to the patent owner very, very little for one, one port but yeah, one cent or something like that. But every HDMI port you are using, for example know that the donor is getting a little bit of it and yeah, if he wasn't open port and open ports are better. It's like open-source software's right. I mean, it's better because it's cheaper, but also if it's approved by everyone. If it's popular, that means that it works very well as well. So that's the difference between open and close as you're mentioning

Amit Sarkar: 00:31:24

help. Thanks very much. I didn't know about that. I mean, I knew it was closed, but I didn't know that it's because of Payten but it makes sense. Because yes, it's proprietary so you need to meet certain standards. So, because Thunderbolt is proprietary because it's owned by Microsoft now. Apple I'm not sure if Apple is currently involved, but it was involved in the initial stages. They have to meet certain strict criteria’s before they can actually put the Thunderbolt symbol, which is a lightning symbol on the laptop or on desktop. So yeah, so now we have come from USB two Thunderbolt so now we can go give power to a laptop using a single port. We can connect monitor through that port and we can connect any other physical device through that port. Funny thing, so now let's see what's happening. We talked about the different types of ports. But you keep hearing about USB three USB four, Thunderbolt three Thunderbolt four display port, one HDMI 2.1. What are these? These are standards. What we talked about type a type B type C their type of connectors, how you connect the device and they are different shapes. Okay. So, the shape decides what you can connect to how you will connect but the standard decides what is the speed it can operate, what is the data transfer, it can operate, what is the power delivery, if it supports, can it operate, or etc. Okay, so the standards dictate that now USBC is a type of connector over that connector. You can do power delivery data transfer, connect a monitor, how because but if the USB C port has USB C 2.0, which is a smaller lower version, then the data transfer is limited the current data transfer on USB four is 40 gigabits per second. On USB 3.2 3.1 3.0 2.0 and 1.1 1.0. It's slower it goes down. So, the speeds are down as we go down revisions.

Rinat Malik: 00:33:36

it's gigabits per second gigabit,

Amit Sarkar: 00:33:37

I said I said gigabit.

Rinat Malik: 00:33:39

You didn't say correctly. I'm just like a true it's an bytes of age times the difference exactly

Amit Sarkar: 00:33:37

exactly 8 bits equal to one byte. So normally, when you see a capital B that's bytes if you see a small b, b for Bravo, if you see a small b, that's bits, so 40 gigabits per second. So, USB type C standard, but it could be USB 3.0 USB 3.2 USB 2.0. We don't know. Okay, so you have to check. It doesn't mean that okay, you have got a Type C connector, so it means that data transfer will be fast. No, it's not that. So, they have different colors. So, the USB, at least type A will have different colors, blue color, black color, white color, so that color indicates which standard it's following. And that tells you what is the maximum speed it can operate.

Rinat Malik: 00:34:32

I Think USB3.2 is red just from memory. But yeah, I mean another quick hack to understand. I mean, I'm talking about the not the USB C but the regular USB dies, you know, very common everywhere. So, in that port you would as you know that some of them are made for data transfer as well as power delivery and some of them just do a power delivery and no data transfer. And some of them just do data transfer, no power delivery, even if you want it to so how would you find out it's not always return alone. So always clear two USB ports, they all look the same. How would you know? So, if you look kind of look through inside the square enclosure, you will see four lines which are the four sort of the silver or golden strips which basically is basically doing all the transfer data or power whatever. So, if you say all four of them, then it is doing data and on both ends. So, both ends of the cable you see all four exists. That means they're doing data and power. But in some in some of them you'll see only three that means they're not doing either one of them, you know there they might just be powering or might just be doing data transfer because one of them that is missing is basically for either data or power. Now you know it's you know it's difficult to tell which one of these is the third one or the second one because one from whichever side you count it could be the second or third one so it's just a hack sometimes, I use to you know, when I'm whenever I'm buying something like a cable or a hub, I want to make sure that it has all four, four lines inside.

Amit Sarkar: 00:36:20

Absolutely. And I think yeah, I think what we'll do is we'll mention link on how to read those lines, because that's a very useful hack, because it's, it's actually not very clear. I mean, what can it be used for and etc, but I want to make one thing I mean, want to clarify something and that is that when we talk about power delivery, we talk about high power delivery USB port itself supports power with very low power. So, the keyboard and the mouse they use very low power because they don't need very high power to operate. So, USB when you connect a pendrive that pendrive needs power to write the data on it. So, it does support power, but very minimum power when I talk about power delivery that's powering the whole laptop. A laptop needs a very high amount of power. So, when I want to connect power when I want to give laptop a power through a USB C port, that board should support power delivery about say 150 200 Watts, so that we can power the laptop. So that's what I meant by power delivery.

Rinat Malik: 00:37:22

Yes, this is Absolutely apply This is actually a good place to also sorry to interrupt to you Amit. So, this is actually a good place to also explore this this whole thing about you know power delivery difference between power delivery and data transfer and it also comes back to the difference between electric or electronic device. So, I mean, so you know, everything is you know, electricity, you know, without electricity, we don't have any of these computing devices working now. How do I mean you've also heard about like, you know that everything in computer is binary everything is zero and one but how does zero and one make you see this video I mean that this video doesn't look like zero and one. So what is actually happening here what is happening? is through these cables, data is being transferred in a way that if a very tiny little burst of electrons, you know electricity is sent through the cable and if it is received, that means the computer received, you know the binary value one, and then if it's not the next in the next second bonus split second, then it's zero and that's how it's communicating between now these electricity is that are being sent and received. They're such so minute that even if you touch it, you know you won't get an electric shock or anything and they're happening like not 1000s but million times, you know, in a very short period like you know, a second etc. Now that's for data transfer, but when there's power delivery that's, you know, analog or digital power delivery that's like actual voltage that are going through and you might actually get a bit of shock with laptops, you won't probably it won't be dangerous. No, I will still don't do it. It might not be fatal, but in some cases, you know, in a high-powered device to power it. It could even be fatal. So yeah, be very careful with that. But the point I'm trying to make is the data transfer is still electricity but it's the voltage or an appearance. Of this is like minute compared to the power delivery in PA and that's the difference between an electric device and an electronic device as well electronic devices has these electrons sent and received and given these binary values in these ways an electric device doesn't have any of this smartness. It just powers something and then for example, a regular kettle to heat up water that's an electric device. But then now it is the smart kettle with Wi Fi and everything that would have an electronic part in it as well as the power which is the electric side of things. So that's another quick side note to understand when we're talking about power delivery and data transfer.

Amit Sarkar: 00:40:23

Well, that was quite useful. I learned something new today. I mean, I've read about electric and electronics, but I think you've explained it quite well. Because I remember one of my lectures in college, they asked me this question and I was not able to answer this. But I think now it makes more sense and now I can explain it to anyone.

Rinat Malik: 00:40:41

Yeah, absolutely. So, the main thing to remember is electronic is to do with electrons. So, it's so small burst of electricity that actually electrons are being counted and not counted. And the electricity electric devices just electricity in general like that settle on a macro level on a bigger level. So, it's just electricity going or not doing so yeah, that's how I remember electronics is to do with as small as electrons being measured. And yeah,

Amit Sarkar: 00:41:09

I think and the reason we, I think the reason the electrons are considered, I mean, we have electronic devices because they are doing some current kind of computing and the computers, they are they're trying to calculate something using the zeros and ones and of course zeros and ones have certain protocols, how would the computer know that these zeros and ones mean this thing and these zeros and ones mean that thing? So, there are certain parameters like the first 10 zeros and ones will be representing these the next 10 zeros and ones will be representing that and so on so forth. So that's how they the computers know whether it's video or audio, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, so it's

Rinat Malik: 00:41

the first eight second date. For example. It's 8-bit computing. Yeah, exactly.

Amit Sarkar: 00:41:54

Exactly. So, So I think that's where we go ahead. So so now we have come down to the types of connectors. So, USB type A B, C is a type of connector, but it can have different versions of USB. Type C can have USB 3.2. It can have 3.4, sorry, four, it can have USB 1.1. It's not supported on USB type C, but just I'm giving an example. With HDMI, you have HDMI 2.0 2.1 and the different standards with Thunderbolt. Initially, it came with Mini DisplayPort. So, the DisplayPort itself can come in different formats. It can come in a standard display port; it can come with the Mini DisplayPort or it can come in type C in type C type of connector. So, Thunderbolt uses used a mini display port initially and then it changed to type C and DisplayPort has also changed to type C now. Some monitors do support the big ones or the small ones. But DisplayPort is also now coming to type C or type C is the type of connector and it's a standard USB type. But the when it supports DisplayPort or when it supports Thunderbolt over the Type C connector that's considered an alternate mode. So, the USB C port when it's using the DisplayPort or the Thunderbolt protocol, it's considered as the alt mode to the standard specifications defined by the USB implementations forum. So, USB if that's the governing body that decides what are these different standards, so here's before, we are currently at 40 gigabits per second and it's coming to USB for version two, which is coming to 80 gigabits per second. Thunderbolt four is currently at 40 gigabits per second data transfer and it is now coming Thunderbolt 580 gigabits per second, so USB four and Thunderbolt are almost at the same thing, but both are using type C connector.

Rinat Malik: 00:14

Now it's very interesting and a lot of the times confusing for everyone to remember. I mean, you know, for those of you who are very much into cabling or setting up various devices you know, it's kind of second nature to you guys. And you know, I meet ally as well. But yeah, I mean, I also know people who are very, you know, very well versed in all the virtual technical stuff, but they have you know very little they get very confused and confused with all the different types of boards there are I mean, for example, the display for the full-sized DisplayPort and HDMI cable is very, very similar looking. They just have one notch. It just doesn't have one or two in the display port full size one. And you know, you have to make sure that you're you know, you have it in the right orientation, which is sometimes annoying, but sometimes confusing for a lot of lot of us as well. So yeah, I mean, I suppose the way to sort of, you know, understand it better. It's just, I mean, you know the way I did it, it's just noticing and you know, just noticing the shape and try to remember the shape and that just helps me not just shape as you just, you know, just glance over it but actually notice the shape and, you know, for example in USB port. You know, a lot of people have this following or they're just trying to put it in and it doesn't go in and then they flip it and then it goes in. And a lot of people say that most of the times they have to do it but if you think about it, usually it's always facing one way. So, in the square enclosure, there is plastic on one half and the other half is empty. So, the empty part usually is facing you. And, you know, so if you're if you're putting in a laptop, so I'm just going to double check. So, the part that is empty, that actually goes on top. So, in female connectors, the there is also they also have plastic on one hand, and in female connectors, it's on the plastic part is on top. So, the empty part in your male connector is usually going to be on top so if you if you do that, if most of the times I just get put it in and the first time because I've noticed it so yeah, that's what I would suggest to our audience as well that if you just start is not just a USB but just the shape of all of these things, and they are not difficult to memorize or you're not like sitting down and memorizing it. But just notice that when you next, I will pick it up, and it will just, you know, become so much easier to remember.

Amit Sarkar: 00:46:41

Actually, that I mean it's easy for me now to remember because I never paid this much attention and I didn't realize you paid this much attention. So, I now know that okay, Renard pays a lot of attention to his ports. But I think that's quite useful because yes, you're right, the female connectors, the empty part is normally on top. And for the male connectors, the empty part normally has to be on the bottom so it's easy to connect. So yeah, that's a useful tip and I'll keep that in mind. So yeah, so we have come now, two different types of connectors. So those are the physical shape and then the different standards. And why has this occurred over this last few decades? The reason being that laptops are becoming much slimmer. Earlier, the laptops as we mentioned with the smartphone, the same thing happened with laptops and desktops. Desktops are still not there yet, but they are also heading in that direction. Because a desktop you can create even far more different types of devices. But with a laptop because it has to be portable, it has to be lightweight, very efficient, and it has to be able to connect to lots of devices especially on the move. So, you need to connect your smartphone etc etc. But laptops and smartphones they do and even desktops now, you can connect devices using Bluetooth problem with glue to this there is a latency the amount of time it takes to get a response. Suppose you send something and if you don't receive it instantly, there is a delay. And that delay is called latency, how much time it takes for something to respond back. If the latency is high, it means it takes a longer time. If the latency is low, it means it's quicker. So normally, when you check the internet connection, the speed they check for latency when we talk about data transfer, we check the latency, etc, etc. Like from the time you start to the time it's actually starts, there is a delay. So, with Bluetooth devices, there is slight latency. So sometimes you don't get instant feedback. That's why I use a wired headset. A lot of people might have noticed, but if not, the reason I use a wired headset is because if I use a Bluetooth headset, there might be slight delay with my audio in comparison to the video, and I don't want to risk it especially because I'm in a in a situation and I also use a wired headset because I get more clarity in terms of audio. So that's why with a wired headset, the latency is very low so I can quickly the video and not the audio are in sync. But if I try to use a Bluetooth device, maybe because of the latency, the audio might be out of sync but with the latest standards of Bluetooth so currently, I think it's 5.1 or 5.2. The latencies are dropping and you can connect multiple devices so I can connect my Bluetooth headphone to my computer and my smartphone at the same time. And if I'm listening to an audio on my laptop, and if a phone rings, it will quickly switch to that and I can I don't have to change the Bluetooth connection. So, it's so incredible.

Rinat Malik: 00:49:41

There is yeah there is there is definitely a lot of advantages of, you know, not just Bluetooth but any wireless option, but then again, it's still not the same as same speed or quality if you like as wired devices and even though I'm not wearing a headset but I'm still using a wired system to record you know my microphone you can't see it. It's attached to the to the webcam but it still then the webcam is attached you know wildly connected to the computer and they absolutely yeah, we don't want to you know we want to provide you guys with the highest quality of audio and video so we opted for the wired solution but yeah, I mean, it's it there is no denying that there is you know, the wired ones are still the most more reliable ones but then obviously then you have the less advantage of, you know, the flexibility or freeness right. I mean, you know, you don't have to, I mean back in the old days when you had you know, extra headset and then it was wired connected with your phone and then sometimes it would just you know, get it would get caught up in a door handle or something. And it was annoying that now all of those things, all of those annoying annoyances have disappeared with the advantages of this so yeah, there is advantage and disadvantage on but now another thing also speaking of the second part that we haven't mentioned is the Ethernet cable and the wireless router. Nowadays obviously you know we have wireless router in every home and you know we connect wirelessly but this is also another thing to think about the speed and reliability of internet you will get if you connect it through an Ethernet cable is actually not comparable to wireless router anyway. I mean I mean at the moment I don't have any speed issues but you know sometimes if there is I will definitely consider connecting you know with my desktop with an ethernet cable so the speed is definitely going to be you know, no one you know it can't be questioned. Definitely would be good speed. So that's another thing and coming back to Ethernet cable, Ethernet cable and Ethernet ports. So, when we say Ethernet, we talk about the cable and the port together. But the cable has a standard which is currently cat six and previously was cat five and it says data transfer rate is really two now what I've heard like five, six years ago and obviously the situation has changed. At that time, I was you know in in in the factory, you know building these ports and then connecting to computers and stuff. I've heard that after cat six there's not going to be any more improvement because the cat six have you know improved the data transfer rate to a degree that we will never need anything more than that. I don't know how that how true that is after now five, six years or you know now that we have more of a clearer vision for the next 10 years. But yeah, that's how sort of improved cat six was. And the port itself is I think it's rj 45 is what it's called. And it's very interesting the individual wires there's I think six wires that goes from end to end. And then you can basically RG 45 is the most probably the easiest one to assemble for a beginner. I mean USB and all that once it's difficult to play with the RG 45 You can basically just open it up and then see the wires and how they're you know assembled in serial. And then you know, playing with it on two ends and if even if you know they are assembled in serial in standard, you know the right colors in the right place. But if you if you change on one side and if you change on the other side, it will still work because the connection the serial will remain the same. So, if you make the same changes so these are some of the interesting things that you can you can play with and then you can close it back up and then it's working. So, Ethernet cable is another you know very common cable that I think everyone has a spare one in the electric cupboard. But yeah, that's another word that we very often use.

Amit Sarkar: 00:54:11

I think you mentioned a very good thing that there is a data loss or sorry the speed loss or data loss speed loss. When you are connected over Wi Fi compared to connecting over the Ethernet cable it just like wireless and wired. So, when you are connected to your router directly that's the best speed you can get. And I have noticed because my room is upstairs my router is downstairs and because my router is downstairs, I get a speed I get a speed loss. So, my speed is 500 Mbps connection, but I get about 250 300 Mbps on a on a day. I don't normally get 500 because there is a there is so many walls, I'm on a different floor, etc etc. So, there is there is a loss but I'm okay with it because 300 Mbps is still good speed. But yeah, if I was connected to my router, I would get like amazing speeds. And I think we should talk about Wi Fi because Wi Fi itself has different standards as well. And it can be confusing so maybe the next topic could be Wi Fi because we just talked about

Rinat Malik: 00:55:16

Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, again, just another side. Note in terms of Wi Fi, we think about it. Think about just the internet speed we are getting when we talk about router, but actually you could use the router to do data transfer between devices that are in the same network. So, it's a LAN. You know, it's a local area network. So, you're creating a network within your house, and all the devices that are connected with each other. For example, I used to have a nasty drive which is a you know, fancy and heartbreak food like and you know, that was connected to the router, and then I would access it in my desktop through the router. But now you would think that you know if it's, you know, doing to internet it's going to be very slow How would you watch 4k movies but you could because it's not actually the internet that's being used, but it's using the routers data transfer capacity. And you know, within this network I mean, you know, if you have if you could have 500 Mbps on internet, imagine how much data it can sort of distributed around the house with that capacity. So, it is it is a sort of untapped resource. I think there could more could be done with it in every home like for example, you know why connected I wanted to do my you know, desktop, not just you know, monitor connects to the router and get it from my desktop rather than having a cable connecting. That's just a thought. I mean, you know, I'm sure it's definitely technically possible, how practical it is something for one of our audiences to try out and let us know.

Amit Sarkar: 00:57:03

Yes, absolutely. And I think network access storage is something that I was also exploring because when you have lot of photographs and my wife has a different computer, I have a different computer and we want to share photographs. I have to transfer it to a hard day and then have to connect it to her hard days and then she transfers the photo so that's a pain. But if you have one single hard disk which you can access over the network, as Raymond mentioned, local area network or LAN, then it's easy because I just transfer all the photos there and she can connect and pick it up from there so there is no physical plugging or unplugging of a device and that makes life so much easier. So, you cannot just store photographs, but important documents, etc. And it's accessible from any, any device that's connected to that network. Suppose your device is connected to the router and you're using a smartphone to connect to the router but using Wi Fi you can still talk to the device that's connected on via so I can talk to that hard disk using my smartphone and maybe I can transfer some data and that is the power so that's NAS drive is called network access storage. So basically, use the network to access the storage instead of compute.

Rinat Malik: 00:58:13

Probably have another episode on that.

Amit Sarkar: 00:58:18

Exactly. I was looking at options for that as well and I was almost about to buy it but then my wife put some senses to my head and she said you don't need it right now.

Rinat Malik: 00:58:28

It does definitely have benefits. Drawbacks as well. But yeah,

Amit Sarkar: 00:58:35

so, the other thing that we saw so let's come back to ports. So, we talked about Thunderbolt and DisplayPort, USB, HDMI, these are the like four standard ports and then we have the Ethernet. Ethernet ports are more popular now on computers, they are no longer available on laptops. So, if you buy a new, very good laptop, most likely you will not get an Ethernet port on it unless it's business laptop business laptops normally come with an Ethernet port, but the travel laptops ultraportable the slim ones they don't come they come with two or three ports and they are mostly USB C ports. That USB C which is the physical port can be used to deliver power to the laptop can be used to transfer device data from one device to another so a laptop to hard disk. It can be used to connect to different monitors for K monitors. So one single port can do all those things, depending upon what port supports what because not every port will support everything.

Rinat Malik: 00:59:35

You could also connect it to an Ethernet router as well. Yes,

Amit Sarkar: 00:59:41

yeah. So, you can but that's an additional thing like you can use a connector. So, connector is basically the you will have a male part that will connect to your laptop and there will be a female part that will connect to other devices but have a different port. So, like a VGA or HDMI or Ethernet. So, you can basically connect your router to your laptop through that connector. So now these all these standardizations are happening, but because we are having only USB Type C ports in most of the laptops now it makes them very slim. So that's the advantage of having one single port that can do everything. Of course, because you have to connect so many different types of devices. You still need ports and you will run out of ports so you will buy a connector. You will buy a dog a USB dock which has a lot of ports and you can connect multiple devices, but making a laptop so slim. I think that's the that's the beauty of having so little ports. And with one port if you can do power delivery data transfer and connect a video device video, like a video output, say like a monitor. That's the icing on the cake. So, I don't need different types of cables. I could use just one cable and I can connect multiple devices. I don't have to search I don't have to maintain different charges. I can just use one cable and I can charge everything. So that's where the future is and EU government has passed a law recently that is making sure that no new smartphones are sold without a USBC port. So basically, all the different types of charging cables that you're used to will become obsolete.

Rinat Malik: 01:01:23

Absolutely business use reason. There are so many other benefits is it's convenient for you as a consumer, but also it would be less of less of a carbon footprint as well because you have to you only need one cable and you can just carry around that one cable or on just that one cable and forget about everything else not manufacturing all different 510 different types of cable, buy them, save them, put them in your drawer and never, never touch them. Never look at it again in all of these things. It's much better for the environment to standardize all of these things. And it is possible and there is no technical limitation of it. And now it's also more enabling as you mentioned, you know all three different types of purposes, power delivery, data, transfer video, you know, sort of streaming, etc. So, yeah, let's, let's hope more of this standardization comes through in future years.

Amit Sarkar: 01:02:23

Yeah. So, I'm also now slowly trying to get rid of devices that are on all types, getting most of the connectors to type C because type C is what I use the most. I don't use Apple products so I'm not concerned about lap or lightning port. But most of the Apple devices on the laptop and the desktop and the tablet side they're mostly now USB type C it's only the iPhones that are still on lightning port and that will change from 2024 onwards because iPhone will have to adhere to the regulation and as a result of that from, I think iPhone 14 has just been announced I for 15 Maybe iPhones 15 or 16 will have Type C connector, that's for sure. So yeah, so now all these things that happened. We talked about the connectors, but what about the cables? So, a lot of times people think that okay, it's just the connectors that have the standards, but no, sometimes the cable that you're using if it's not the right specification, it cannot handle the data transfers that the port enables. So even though your port allows 40 gigabits per second of data transfer, just because you have an inferior cable that doesn't support that standard, you are still outputting at say 10 gigabits per second, so you're not utilizing the full potential of that port. So sometimes you need to check the standard which the cable follows as well. So, suppose you want to use it for Thunderbolt four, then you have to check whether the cable that you want to use follows that standard. So, you have the type of connector and the standard that it follows. So, the type decides what you connect the standard decides what is the data transfer rate or what is the power delivery rate can you power deliver 240 volts to your laptop to power it so you need to make sure that your cable supports all that. So yeah, so those are some of the things that we when we talk about ports, or something that you need to think about. The future is getting much brighter because type C is getting standardized, because it's an open standard. A lot of other companies are pushing for it. And because it's open it means it gets adopted much quicker. It's widely adopted. So, if in future, if you want to find a cable for your device, because it's open, a lot of people might be already using it so you don't have to carry a cable you can actually ask someone and they can lend you their own cable and you can use that to charge your device or use it for data transfer. So yeah, so these ports are making our lives easier.

Rinat Malik: 01:04:42

Absolutely agree and hopefully the audience you guys have had enjoyed this conversation. I thoroughly appreciate it too. And yeah, we look forward to getting feedback and connections from you guys. It's always nice to know about what you guys are thinking and potential topics that you want us to cover. So yeah, please do reach out and yeah, so far. It's been amazing and hope to see you guys’ again next week.

Amit Sarkar 01:5:15

Yes, thank you. Thanks, everyone. Bye.