AQC111U & Apple Silicon?

[unphased]

I have been looking into ways to get 10Gbit networking capability to an Apple Silicon Macbook.

At first I thought that the only viable options are:

- Purpose-built 10GBase-T thunderbolt adapters. Still not sure which are apple silicon compatible.
- SFP+ thunderbolt adapters (more flexible, but i think these are overpriced, would like to see one of these under $200),
- thunderbolt eGPU enclosures with NICs inside: I have tried a few AQC107 inside my Sonnet breakaway box: ASUS Areion 10G (a bundle from my Zenith Extreme mobo) and innodisk egpl-t101 (yes, unconventional, as a m.2 interface, but I had a pcie adapter and i was hopeful…) and sadly neither worked at all with my M1 Max macbook pro. I am hopeful that all I need is an AQC-107S or something to stick in the enclosure that will somehow work with macOS’s drivers.

I thought those were the only possibilities. But it seems like this is not the case!

I found the ”5Gbps” AQC111U USB adapters. It’s better than nothing! And suitably cheap.

Then I found reviews saying these don’t have apple silicon support either.

Does anyone know if the 2.5Gb adapters are in the same situation also?

The USB C and windows compatibility of these things is also interesting for another reason. I will probably have a PC work computer soon, and it would be nice to give it faster wired networking if possible as well even if it is only 2.5 or 3.3 Gbit. Every little bit helps. Thunderbolt doesn’t seem to be in the cards there, and running a PCIe riser out of m.2 on an actual laptop is beyond my acceptable jank threshold.

 

[unphased]

QNA-T310G1S is $183 now and I suppose it will handle the thunderbolt side of the equation. I saw a few reports of it working on apple silicon. Caldigit also seems possible. But I would prefer a SFP+ interface to 10GBase-T for flexibility.

 

[i386]

I don't think that the hardware is the problem, but the software/drivers.

 

[unphased]

Yeah, that's what I'm asking about I guess. Waiting for the software to get there... I guess it'll be (moderately) big news when the software finally gets released.

It looks like bonding multiple of these $150ish 10GBaseT or SFP+ thunderbolt dongles is the only way to get 10G or faster speed to apple silicon right now outside of built in (i believe aqc113) 10G factory option on mac mini (and studio?).

 

[ectoplasmosis]

We use Sonnet SOLO10G SFP+ TB3 units. Expensive, but work perfectly with M1 Max/Ultra Mac Studios.

I haven't found a working 25Gb solution yet...

 

[dinvlad]

Sorry to revive this, another solution would be to get a Thunderbolt PCI card (for a compatible motherboard, or if it has TB built-in) and then set up ethernet-over-TB connection on both ends. I'm exploring this route rn with GC-Maple Ridge card, which is compatible with both Gigabyte and ASRock mobos. They go for only $100 on Amazon (but long shipping) or a bit higher on eBay (found an offer with faster shipping).

My main concern with full TB solution is power consumption, but from what I understand it's using Intel JHL8540 chip, which should only consume a few Watt (+ TB cables, but I don't think those even get warm, according to reviews).

The side benefit with this approach is all of the extra goodies one can get with TB (particularly v4), like daisy-chaining devices and charging (with 100W available via this card's PCIE power connectors), and even connect it to a display over the same wire (though a dock would be needed, for multiple connected devices). Fewer cables makes it clean!

 

[spektykles]

Marvell discontinued support for the chip (after they acquired Aquantia), its impossible to make it work. Even the current Linux driver are buggy. It works best on Windows IMHO.
Realtek is developing a competing 5Gbe USB chipset (RTL8157), however there is no news about it and no product to be found.