How many USB hubs can you daisy-chain to a single port and what will happen if you connect too many?

3 years ago by Xero to c/nostupidquestions

Given that all of them are all powered hubs so power won't be the issue and you have enough space to put them. How much will it impact performance, latency or other things I don't know about? Or it will straight up kill the port if there are too many hubs?

12bitmisfit 92 points 3 years ago

5 hubs deep and 127 devices per usb controller (not port)

To confuse this more many usb3 or newer controllers won't handle more than 32 devices.

Now add to that most 7 port usb hubs are actually 2x 4 port hubs.

You may be starting to see why it is so hard to definitively say if a certain usb setup will work or not without testing the actual hardware.

Side note, a lot of usb devices even count as 2 devices due to hw encryption chips, like wd external hard drives.

path: 0 5665853, hotness: undefined, score: 92, children: 0
actionjbone 78 points 3 years ago

Theoretically, there's a 127 device max.

In practice, it depends on each vendor's hardware implementation.

path: 0 5664495, hotness: undefined, score: 78, children: 0
bladerunnerspider 41 points 3 years ago

There is an LTT video on this subject if you care to look for it.

path: 0 5664617, hotness: undefined, score: 41, children: 0
jet 25 points 3 years ago path: 0 5665200, hotness: undefined, score: 25, children: 0
Risk 21 points 3 years ago

Forget daisy-chaining. I gave up on finding a single decent USB hub, let alone connecting them together.

path: 0 5668313, hotness: undefined, score: 21, children: 6
ares35 6 points 3 years ago

i have a number of clients with anker powered usb3 hubs. no issues from any of them, and one of those is my.. uh.. 'most difficult' one. if he had a problem, i would know about it

path: 0 5668313 5670411, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 5
seaQueue 3 points 3 years ago

+1, powered USB3 hubs have worked fine for me as well. Keep them away from any 2.4GHz transceivers though, I've had issues with RF noise from them wrecking wireless mouse/keyboard signals.

path: 0 5668313 5670411 5686838, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 4
Risk 3 points 3 years ago

Huh, that's interesting. That might be exactly the cause of the issue I was having with them (plugging in 2.4Ghz keyboards and mice into them).

path: 0 5668313 5670411 5686838 5695392, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 3
seaQueue 2 points 3 years ago

I worked around that by plugging in a usb2 extension cable that came with something I bought and placing the 2.4ghz transceiver maybe 2-3' away from the hub. Same deal with the mouse and keyboard, they need to be a reasonable distance (some # of inches) away from USB 3 signals.

path: 0 5668313 5670411 5686838 5695392 5697056, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 2
lauha 20 points 3 years ago

Hubs can only go 5 levels deep daisy chained

path: 0 5664478, hotness: undefined, score: 20, children: 3
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble 21 points 3 years ago

Windows will even notify you of exactly this limitation.

From the thunderbolt port on my laptop, to my dock, to my monitor, to my big ass hub was 1 too many hops. Obviously somewhere along there were some hubs that weren’t obvious to the naked eye.

path: 0 5664478 5665575, hotness: undefined, score: 21, children: 2
Shurimal 16 points 3 years ago

Obviously somewhere along there were some hubs that weren’t obvious to the naked eye.

Probably the port on your laptop was on a hub built onto the mobo. If my understanding is right that's how USB ports usually are connected: controller->hub->ports. If you open up device manager and go to USB controllers you'll see several root hubs and hubs even when you have no external hubs or docks connected.

path: 0 5664478 5665575 5667023, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 0
lauha 5 points 3 years ago

Yes, of the multiport hubs have a subhubs already

path: 0 5664478 5665575 5669997, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
JTskulk 5 points 3 years ago

I don't know about Daisy chaining them, but I found that the limit for usb3 is 16 devices. I was using 2 hubs and the integrated ports at the time.

path: 0 5664512, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 3
Hjalamanger 5 points 3 years ago

According to some other answer here you could be able to have 32 devices but some devices register as two different devices, therefore you can only have 16

path: 0 5664512 5666792, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
Manzas -3 points 3 years ago

One port Edit: The fuck did I mean

path: 0 5664512 5665308, hotness: undefined, score: -3, children: 1
SpaceNoodle 10 points 3 years ago

To rule them all

path: 0 5664512 5665308 5666581, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
nostupidquestions
nostupidquestions

@lemmy.world

login for more options
50284
7068
5553

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

go to feed...