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Considering buying an USB-C to Ethernet Adaptor?

Avatar Eleanor Spenceley
I have a Wifi network supporting 802.11ac. This gives me a reliable 330 Mbps. That's okay but far short of the theoretical 1200. Still, that's about right for this system.

As I am moving a lot of large files around from my MBP at the moment, I thought it would be nice to get a little bit of a speed up if I use the ethernet network here. My old 2006/2008 Mac Pros will push files through it (at around 930 Mbps) without an issue.

So I looked on Amazon and bought what I thought was a good review and relatively cheap ethernet adapter from Uni. Unfortunately when this was connected, the best speed I got with it was just 90 Mbps!!! It appears even with a Cat 7 ethernet cable the Mac recognised this adapter as a 100 Mbps device. No matter what I tried, my Mac refused to budge on the setting. Investigating further I see I needed to use their driver but 2 worries:

1. It only supports Intel Mac (okay I suppose for now)
2. It only supports upto Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina).

I installed this driver in any case and see it actually installing an old unsupported Kernel extension into Monterey 12.3. Hmm this is probably never going to work... Besides, installing drivers on a Mac these days? How Windows like!?! Unsurprisingly it didn't improve things.

So the adapter is going back and the drivers uninstalled.

I have since bought a Belkin Ethernet Adapter from the Apple Store (twice as expensive mind) and am getting great speeds ~ 920Mbps to my old Mac Pros. It also works without the need for drivers!

Hope this is useful to someone here.

How did I check the network speed? I'm using a useful utility from the App Store called 'Network Speed Tester'. This is ran best with the App running on both ends of the test and it's backward compatible with at least my old machines running El Capitan.

Re: Considering buying an USB-C to Ethernet Adaptor?

Avatar Lionel Ogden
I bought a similar adapter to connect my MBP to our wired internet connection as the wi-fi signal varies around the house. My laptop connected at 73 Mbps in the office which is the same it gets by wi-fi when in the same room as the router. This doesn't really add much to Eleanor's conclusions as I was using it for a slightly different purpose.

Re: Considering buying an USB-C to Ethernet Adaptor?

Avatar Rick Churchill
I had a problem with a cheap DisplayPort cable which was suppose to support 4K and caused me no end of heartache. The PC supplier, Chillblast (local company), sent me a free cable made by StarTech.com via Amazon. Thereafter I've always used this make. They are a little dearer but they perform.

Re: Considering buying an USB-C to Ethernet Adaptor?

Avatar Eleanor Spenceley
Someone from Uni contacted me saying they sell a different adapter which should not have the slow down. They sent me a 'free' adapter to test and they were right, this version worked. There was some instability in keeping a high rate (ranging from 732-939Mps) but it does work. The Belkin adapter was a rock solid 918-925Mbps.
This one you should avoid whereas this one I tested certainly was better for the price. But the Belkin is the best if you're prepared to pay almost double.
Nice they got back to me.
 
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