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.
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.
Last edited:
