But, why doesn't the ethernet just connect to the device directly? Have they really taken so many ports away from us that the only way to connect to ethernet is to daisy chain through a fucking smart monitor?
Single cable docking. You plug your laptop into the monitor via USBC and it charges your laptop, provides it a Ethernet connection and drives the monitor display.
Not defending the sickening concept of a “spy” monitor.
But my Dell P2423DE monitor has a USB-C “dock” built into it so that I plug a single cable into my laptop which connects it to 2x 1440p monitors, power, mouse, headset receiver, keyboard and a wired ethernet connection.
Quite frankly, it’s awesomely convenient.
It’s totally legitimate to have a network port on a monitor.
I've never heard of this. What specific devices, if you don't mind me asking?
I had no idea a Thunderbolt hub could serve as a parallel Ethernet hub, nor that there were devices that could or would want to take advantage of this.
AFAIK, while there is a standard for Ethernet-over-Thunderbolt, typical Thunderbolt docking stations simply expose the underlying Ethernet controller as a PCIe device, typically using a chipset with drivers that are widely available if not preinstalled on all major OSes.
In other words, they not hubs (or switches) in the Ethernet sense, just a different physical connection to an otherwise ordinary PCIe NIC.
I imagine non-Thunderbolt USB docks are similar, presenting as a USB hub with a garden-variety USB Ethernet controller attached to one of its ports.
With that said, I imagine a "smart monitor" with integrated dock would additionally include Ethernet switch-like functionality, to enable sharing of a single physical Ethernet port (or wireless connection) between the connected host and the smart TV subsystem, just as some servers allow sharing of a single Ethernet port between the installed OS and an onboard BMC.
