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Best Ethernet speed option?

musique

musique

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 10, 2009
222
5
My 2012 MBP kicked the bucket this summer and I was waiting for the Apple announcements of late October to decide on a replacement. After much soul-searching and intense budget-shuffling, I decided on a 2015 MBP that should arrive tomorrow. (My local Best Buy has the new 2016 MBPs on display and it is one beautiful and sexy piece of gear.)

The network I'm on has an Apple AirPort Extreme (803.11ac equipped) as well as 1 Gigabit Ethernet. Because the MBP has no Ethernet port, I’m looking at purchasing an adapter to connect it via Ethernet. As I understand it the speeds the MBP could achieve to get on the network are:

  1. IEEE 802.11ac = 500 Megabits/sec
  2. USB 3 = 5 Gigabits/sec
  3. Thunderbolt 2 = 20 Gigabits/sec

But these are theoretical. It seems that the Thunderbolt 2 port has the fastest speed, but will it make a difference on the 1 Gb Ethernet network? Will the USB port provide the same throughput?

So my question is: Which one of these options will give me the fastest network connection?
 
USB3 connector should do the job.

Get one that also has extra USB ports on it.
 
Thank you all for the rapid feedback. I am looking at the USB3 to Ethernet adapters online and see a lot of brands with which I am not familiar. Is this a fairly standard accessory? Any recommendations or will almost anything work.

(There are several by a company called Anker that have both Ethernet and three USB3 ports.)
 
musique said:
Thank you all for the rapid feedback. I am looking at the USB3 to Ethernet adapters online and see a lot of brands with which I am not familiar. Is this a fairly standard accessory? Any recommendations or will almost anything work.

(There are several by a company called Anker that have both Ethernet and three USB3 ports.)
Click to expand...
They are fairly common and standard unless you are looking at some off brand junk. That Anker one on Amazon has a bunch of good reviews from MacBook users, so I think you would be good with that one
 
BrianBaughn said:
I'm kind of wondering what you mean by "fastest network connection".
Click to expand...


fast1
fast/
adjective
superlative adjective: fastest
  1. 1.
    moving or capable of moving at high speed.
    "a fast and powerful car"
    synonyms: speedy, quick, swift, rapid;
2.​
(of a clock or watch) showing a time ahead of the correct time.
"I keep my watch fifteen minutes fast"

​
net·work
ˈnetˌwərk/
noun
  1. 1.
    an arrangement of intersecting horizontal and vertical lines.
    synonyms: web, lattice, net, matrix, mesh, crisscross, grid, reticulum, reticulation;
    plexus
    "a network of arteries"

2.
a group or system of interconnected people or things.
"a trade network"
synonyms: system, complex, nexus, web, webwork
"a network of friends"


con·nec·tion
kəˈnekSH(ə)n/
noun
  1. 1.
    a relationship in which a person, thing, or idea is linked or associated with something else.
    "the connections between social attitudes and productivity"
    synonyms: link, relationship, relation, interconnection, interdependence, association; More


  2. 2.
    NORTH AMERICANinformal
    a supplier of narcotics.
    "she introduced Jean to a number of her male drug connections"



(sorry)
 
musique said:
MI decided on a 2015 MBP that should arrive tomorrow.

2. USB 3 = 5 Gigabits/sec
3. Thunderbolt 2 = 20 Gigabits/sec

But these are theoretical. It seems that the Thunderbolt 2 port has the fastest speed, but will it make a difference on the 1 Gb Ethernet network? Will the USB port provide the same throughput?
Click to expand...

There was someone benchmarking the latest MBP's and comparing to an iMac:

Using WiFi, both were about the same speed. The iMac's Ethernet was faster than WiFi. The MBP with a USB to Ethernet adapter however was slower than WiFi. My theory is that the extra step of USB to Ethernet was slowing things down.

So - as your getting a 2015, I recommend the Apple TB2 to Ethernet dongle.
 
curmudgeonette said:
There was someone benchmarking the latest MBP's and comparing to an iMac:

Using WiFi, both were about the same speed. The iMac's Ethernet was faster than WiFi. The MBP with a USB to Ethernet adapter however was slower than WiFi. My theory is that the extra step of USB to Ethernet was slowing things down.

So - as your getting a 2015, I recommend the Apple TB2 to Ethernet dongle.
Click to expand...

Apple is still selling the same stupid USB 2 to 10/100 Ethernet adapter that was introduced for the Air way back when. which, as you pointed out, is now slower than regular WiFi. there are though plenty of excellent USB 3 to Ethernet adapters that deliver full Gigabit speed.
 
musique said:
Thank you all for the rapid feedback. I am looking at the USB3 to Ethernet adapters online and see a lot of brands with which I am not familiar. Is this a fairly standard accessory? Any recommendations or will almost anything work.

(There are several by a company called Anker that have both Ethernet and three USB3 ports.)
Click to expand...


I have that one . Seems to be working good too
 
I've used a j5create USB-3 to gigabit ethernet adapter to push a VM into a VMware datacenter, which needs a decent sustained speed and it didn't let me down. I've also seen them used to give a small server an extra interface.

This wasn't the exact model I used, but it should do the job.
http://www.j5create.com/our-products/ethernet-adapters/jue130.html

But depending on what your needs are, wireless might be fast enough.

Regarding which is faster - as long as the interface is working as intended, then gigabit ethernet is gigabit ethernet and both the USB-3 and Thunderbolt models should give you gigabit ethernet speeds.

Do you have any special requirements like jumbo frames?
 
Last edited:
Make sure to pick one that doesn't require extra drivers for Macs. Personally, I want it to as be stable as possible and don't want any third-party device drivers on my Mac.
 
Especially after a new release of MacOS this can get really frustrating if new drivers are required because the older ones do not work anymore.

I suggest you to NOT buy an adapter with a Realtek 0x8153 ethernet chip. Sometimes the adapter does not wake up from sleep requiring you to reboot the MacBook. At this point I do not know whether it is an issue with the Late 2016 MacBook Pro or something else.
 
curmudgeonette said:
So - as your getting a 2015, I recommend the Apple TB2 to Ethernet dongle.
Click to expand...

I reiterate, because the OP is getting a 2015 MBP with the combined DisplayPort / Thunderbolt 2 port, the only sensible solution is: Apple Thunderbolt Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (MD463LL/A). Why would you get anything else?

alex0002 said:
Regarding which is faster - as long as the interface is working as intended, then gigabit ethernet is gigabit ethernet and both the USB-3 and Thunderbolt models should give you gigabit ethernet speeds.
Click to expand...

A USB interfaced adapter likely cannot saturate gigabit Ethernet. To send a packet, the data has to be passed through the Mac's USB driver stack, then sent across USB in it's entirety, processed by a cheap slow microcontroller in the adapter, and only then finally transmitted on Ethernet. With a Thunderbolt interface, the data can be directly DMA'ed to the transmitter.
 
curmudgeonette said:
A USB interfaced adapter likely cannot saturate gigabit Ethernet. To send a packet, the data has to be passed through the Mac's USB driver stack, then sent across USB in it's entirety, processed by a cheap slow microcontroller in the adapter, and only then finally transmitted on Ethernet. With a Thunderbolt interface, the data can be directly DMA'ed to the transmitter.
Click to expand...

Someone has already done that comparison and it appears that the USB-3 devices can saturate gigabit ethernet just as well as the Thunderbolt interface.

Both work pretty much the same in terms of speed. Using iperf, I was getting 111-115 MB/sec transfers on both. However, the Thunderbolt does not disconnect under heavy load.
Click to expand...

Obviously there can be quality issues with cheap adaptors and that might be a good reason to go for a known item from Apple. On the other hand, I've never had disconnect problems with USB-3 interfaces pushing several GB of VM into a datacenter, so perhaps his main problem was an out of date driver (review was from 2013) as suggested in the comments on that page.

Plus the USB device can be used on more different machines than the Thunderbolt interface, if that's a consideration. It might be an issue for some people, but others just use one machine and never share interfaces and adapters.
 
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I used the Apple Thunderbolt 2 to Ethernet adapter on my previous machine. While USB3 likely provides the same effective speeds, I didn't have to worry about drivers, nor use up a USB port, by going with the Apple TB adapter.
 
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