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Anyone ordering the new Mini with the faster 10gig ethernet port?

jimhanseng said:
I recently purchased a MAC Mini P4 Pro with the 10 gig upgrade. The Port is total trash. Even when I can keep it connected, performance is all over the place. Upload speed is below 5mbps when they should be at 41.5 mbps for my internet service. Down loan sometime runs near full speed at 1.2 gbps (it should be 1.4 gbs) but often drops to under 100 mbps. I have a $24 USB c 2.5 gig adapter that runs perfectly all the time. I have tried many different cables (some very expensive) and both 2.6gb and 1gb switches but get the same results. the eternal Wi-Fi often take primary position when the port is acting up. If I disable the Wi-Fi to keep the ethernet port the primary then I lose network access all together even though the port shows connected.
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Is internet speed the only way you are measuring port performance? Often it doesn't matter what your carrier quotes you as their top speed, at least with my carrier, they are never at peak (1gps), and I am happy if I get 800 mbps, often its far lower. Depends on how much activity is on the internet, not just my house.

As has been stated, the best way to get consistent fast performance that reflects on the port is direct connect hardware devices like a NAS or DAS, and even then it and your cables and your switches (which sounds like you have covered) must be appropriate.
 
I was considering getting the 10gb option, but the micro center 499 price was too good to pass up. Instead I got a usb-c 5gb Ethernet adapter (wisdpi model) and it is working great with my UniFi switch and an auto negotiating sfp+ rj45 module.
 
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kbonnel wrote above:
"Instead I got a usb-c 5gb Ethernet adapter (wisdpi model) and it is working great"

Could you tell us specifically which one?
Maybe provide a link?
 
Fishrrman said:
kbonnel wrote above:
"Instead I got a usb-c 5gb Ethernet adapter (wisdpi model) and it is working great"

Could you tell us specifically which one?
Maybe provide a link?
Click to expand...
Of course, I got this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DF2TTT9H?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

I started doing some research on the 5Gbps USB-C ethernet adapters after a friend told me about the WISDPI model they have been testing. It uses the Realtek 8157 chip, and a lot of other brands appear to be releasing models using the same chipset.

It was plug and play with Sequoia, the only "issue" is the connection speed under settings isn't correct, and shows 100baseTX. But, it is certainly connecting at 5Gbps, and I have done a ton of iperf3 testing against my 10Gbps NAS.

I also have a vlan configured on this adapter as well, and that has also been working perfectly.
 
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will probably consider it in the future if I ever get a NAS and faster ISP, but for now, I stuck with gigabit ethernet on my base M4. current ISP is at 9xx mbps, so even though my entire network is 2.5Gbe (ubiquiti setup), I have no real need for faster speeds.
 
I just went through this exercise. We got 2.5GB fiber and I upgraded some of the core switches of our house network to 10GB, and the rest to 2.5GB. My wife has a she-shed and when we put that in I ran a multimode fiber cable out to it, and switching out the SFPs got that link up to 10GB as well.

I was upgrading a mac mini and ordered it with the 10 gbe option, and it works just as advertised. We have a NAS that has a 10 gbe port and it sure enough gets 9.mumble gb/sec transfers. Nice for Time Machine. For my MBP I got a 5GB USB dongle for it. There are 10GB Thunderbolt adapters available, but they're just comically huge.

Lastly, our house has 25 year old Cat-5 wiring in it, but that appears to be working just fine at 10GB, probably because none of it is terribly long.
 
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kbonnel said:
It was plug and play with Sequoia, the only "issue" is the connection speed under settings isn't correct, and shows 100baseTX. But, it is certainly connecting at 5Gbps, and I have done a ton of iperf3 testing against my 10Gbps NAS.
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Apple may have fixed this in a recent update. I remember seeing the same thing on my 5GB dongle, but at the moment it correctly says 5000GB in the System Settings network panel.
 
nsayer said:
Apple may have fixed this in a recent update. I remember seeing the same thing on my 5GB dongle, but at the moment it correctly says 5000GB in the System Settings network panel.
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I concur, I just checked and it reports 5000Base-T under the Hardware tab of the adapter.
 
For Future Proofing, a $100 Apple Upgrade seems quite reasonable. I'd do it even though I have no other 10GBE infrastructure.
 
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When I first got my MAC MINI P4 Pro, I got it with the 10Gig ethernet adapter. I switched to a 2.5gb Dongle because the 10 GB interface was HORRIBLE. Since then, I started running MAC OS 26 Developers Beta. I switched to the 10Gig port and it appears to be working. I will see if the OS upgrade fixed the problem.
 
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jimhanseng said:
When I first got my MAC MINI P4 Pro, I got it with the 10Gig ethernet adapter. I switched to a 2.5gb Dongle because the 10 GB interface was HORRIBLE. Since then, I started running MAC OS 26 Developers Beta. I switched to the 10Gig port and it appears to be working. I will see if the OS upgrade fixed the problem.
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The issues appear to be resolved. I am getting excellent performance on my 2.5 G network.
 
Got it, but haven't tested it much, as it is not my machine... doesn't seem to be too bad.
 
bapegg said:
I had issues with the 1gb port on my 2018 mini and also on my new M4 mini. I never could get them to stay connected when I manually set them to 1gb. Otherwise they would always default to 100mb. Yet the OWC 11 port thunderbolt dock runs just fine at 1gb when it was hooked up to the 2018 and then moved over to the M4.

I didn't bother with getting any faster that 1gb since internet access is capped at 400 mb with Charter Spectrum. My choices for internet service is Spectrum or the new AT&T Internet Air. Who knows when fiber will be available in my small rural town.

The fastest internal network won't do much good if my internet speed is the bottleneck.

I currently use a 8 bay DAS connected to my 2018 mini as a file server and transfer speeds are fine between all of my Apple products.Transferign from a Windows 11 computer to the 2018 Mac is sometimes painfully slow though.
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Can you give link for 8 bay das? Or brand - model? Thanks.
 
I have Gfiber and love the 10gig port. The router has one multi gig port and I have an 8gig plan and it is so fun to have the 10gig port. It's just really fun. Gig fiber is testing 20gigs. It will be fun.
 
I just bought a 10GBps Mini Mac M4Pro. Glad I did with explanation. I was going to get 1GBps but said oh well $100 and saved one thunderbolt port since I did not have to run an external adapter.. So I have a 2.5GBps home backbone. I used a 2.5GBps adapter with my home network and I was getting about 1.5GBps hardwired. I check my new MM with adapter and I still got 1.5GBps. Hooked up the 10GBps and got 2.25 GBps BUT my Time Machine would always disconnect from my NAS. Ended up well. I hard set all the settings in setup for the network and now everything runs great. Getting 2.2 GBps works much better when transferring large files and iCloud data as well.
 
I find it really annoying that Apple do not offer a 10 gigabit thunderbolt ethernet adapter.

1 gigabit ethernet, in the days of SSDs running at 7-10 gigaBYTES per second and WIFI running at multi-gigabit speed is just ... cheap.

Any premium machine shipping with an ethernet port built in, in 2025 should be 10 gig at least, imho. Otherwise why bother.

Even consumer PC motherboards are shipping with 2.5 and 10G onboard and have been for a few years now.
 
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throAU said:
You mean the 4k-8k video editing crowd with super expensive and limited local storage? :D
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That’s exactly what Apple wants — for people to buy Macs with 8TB drives :)

But seriously — I have a OWC adapter. It’s big and gets really hot. I also tried a QNAP adapter — it’s small, but its fan whines like a vacuum cleaner. I don’t think the laws of physics will allow Apple to release a 10Gbit adapter that’s small, silent, and good-looking. And they’re not even trying… It’s easier for them to sell a Mac with built-in 10Gbit; the extra cost is lower than the price of an adapter.
 
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