Without clear labels, you can rely on colors, but remember that those aren't mandated by USB-IF, so they're not a guarantee.

Blue: Supporting USB 3.0 SuperSpeed technology and above, blue ports identify a device capable of fast data transfer: up to 5 Gbps (that's 5,000 Mbps) -- a significant jump from previous generations.

Some software and specialty hardware requires you to use a traditional serial port. Serial ports have been around for decades and work by transferring one bit of data at a time at a relatively slow ...