Raspberry Compute Module IO Board

A point to take note of

The physical layer is the part that is 10, 100 or 1000 Mbits, nothing above that even really cares and it is only relevent between the two directly connected devices (Pi and a HUB for instance). if any other devices are not compatable at the same speed when the connection is established then the two connected devices agree on a common speed, often with modern chips also compensating for non MX cables too if needed. if a PI connected to a hub is 100Mbit and on the hub is the PC at 1GBit, the HUB will buffer and speed shift between the two

The TCP/IP layer is completly seperate and it often has a bigger impact as it decides the packet size, typically 1500bytes per packet but this can again be over-ridden if desired and you know what your doing

USB is as correctly stated a 480MBit bus so the PI irrespective of its performance will never get to exceed that, meaning it will never be able to make full use of a 1GBit LAN but can participate on one, the higher speed will mean it gets its data out of the chip and on its way quicker and therefor will free up the LAN quicker. If the PI was uprated to USB3 then of course things improve quite a bit, or a LAN chip is more directly connected to the chip / CPU bus.

So does a faster LAN chip have benefits... yes. will the app get its data out quicker if everything else is the same, probably not or only marginally so is it really worth it, you can judge that yourself

as far as designing a board to be faster for networking and USB, have you looked at this :- Meet MinnowBoard MAX | minnowboard.org or this ODROID | Hardkernel, basically the job your trying to do has been done and for a good price too so unless your doing it purly for the intelectual excersize, your trying to replicate whats been done already

And thats OK, I just want you to understand what your facing

A point to take note of

The physical layer is the part that is 10, 100 or 1000 Mbits, nothing above that even really cares and it is only relevent between the two directly connected devices (Pi and a HUB for instance). if any other devices are not compatable at the same speed when the connection is established then the two connected devices agree on a common speed, often with modern chips also compensating for non MX cables too if needed. if a PI connected to a hub is 100Mbit and on the hub is the PC at 1GBit, the HUB will buffer and speed shift between the two

The TCP/IP layer is completly seperate and it often has a bigger impact as it decides the packet size, typically 1500bytes per packet but this can again be over-ridden if desired and you know what your doing

USB is as correctly stated a 480MBit bus so the PI irrespective of its performance will never get to exceed that, meaning it will never be able to make full use of a 1GBit LAN but can participate on one, the higher speed will mean it gets its data out of the chip and on its way quicker and therefor will free up the LAN quicker. If the PI was uprated to USB3 then of course things improve quite a bit, or a LAN chip is more directly connected to the chip / CPU bus.

So does a faster LAN chip have benefits... yes. will the app get its data out quicker if everything else is the same, probably not or only marginally so is it really worth it, you can judge that yourself

as far as designing a board to be faster for networking and USB, have you looked at this :- Meet MinnowBoard MAX | minnowboard.org or this ODROID | Hardkernel, basically the job your trying to do has been done and for a good price too so unless your doing it purly for the intelectual excersize, your trying to replicate whats been done already

And thats OK, I just want you to understand what your facing