Sonnet ships $199 Solo 10G Thunderbolt 3 Ethernet adapter offering 10 gigabit connectivity

Thunderbolt 3 GPU enclosure producer Sonnet has launched a new accessory that adds a 10-gigabit Ethernet connection to a Mac or MacBook, allowing it to communicate with other devices on a high-speed wired network via the Mac's Thunderbolt 3 port.

The Solo 10G Thunderbolt 3 Edition network adapter is an expansion of Sonnet's product range, which already includes a number of units that house two network connections. As the Solo name suggests, the adaptor offers a single RJ45 10 Gigabit Ethernet connection, which takes advantage of the 40Gbps of bandwidth available with Thunderbolt 3.

Connected directly to the Thunderbolt 3 port or at the end of a daisy chain, the Solo 10G can connect at its highest speed when used on a Cat 6 or Cat 6A cable at distances of up to 55 meters (180 feet) and 100 meters (328 feet) respectively, and with suitable switches and routers. Supporting the NBASE-T standard, it is also able to run at slower speeds such as 5Gbps and 2.5Gbps, if used over cheaper existing CAT 5e networks or at longer distances.

Claimed to offer high throughput performance with low host-CPU utilization, it includes support for network-related functions such as flow control, 64-bit address support for systems using more than 4GB of memory, and stateless offloads including TCP, UDP, and IPv4 checksum offloading.

Sonnet Solo 10G Thunderbolt 3 10 gigabit Ethernet adapter MacBook pro

There is also support for Audio Video Bridging, making it suitable for use in professional audio and video applications where data stream synchronization is crucial, and Energy-Efficient Ethernet that can reduce the adapter's power demands of its host depending on network traffic.

Measuring 3.1 inches by 4.5 inches by 1.1-inches tall, the Solo 10G is enclosed in a rugged aluminum enclosure that also cools the components, allowing it to run silently without a fan. The adapter is also bus-powered, drawing its energy from the Thunderbolt 3 port directly and not requiring a secondary cable and power adapter.

The attached Thunderbolt 3 cable is said to be easily replaceable, one that is held captive and plugged into an internal Thunderbolt 3 port, allowing it to be changed by the manufacturer itself or an authorized reseller without replacing the entire adapter.

The Sonnet Solo 10G Thunderbolt 3 Edition is available to purchase now, priced at $199, making it one of the cheapest ways to enable other Mac desktops to utilize the same networking speed as the iMac Pro. Sonnet advises the adapter requires macOS 10.13.4 or later to run, as well as a Thunderbolt 3 port.

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55 Comments

Soli 9 Years · 9981 comments

About 6 years ago

10GigE is a head scratcher, to me. It’s slower than both USB and WiFi, by costa more and is much bulkier, despite GigE being a longstanding standard that faster than both for a very long time.

I’d love for my wired Macs and wired NAS to have a 10GigE connection but I’m not even sure that’s a feasible option for consumer-grade equipment.

Is there a reason for that?

cpsro 14 Years · 3239 comments

Soli said:

10GigE is a head scratcher, to me. It’s slower than both USB and WiFi, by costa more and is much bulkier, despite GigE being a longstanding standard that faster than both for a very long time.

I’d love for my wired Macs and wired NAS to have a 10GigE connection but I’m not even sure that’s a feasible option for consumer-grade equipment.

Is there a reason for that?

10GbE is an order of magnitude faster than WiFi and similar in speed to USB 3.1. USB is usually short-range and entirely peer-to-peer. Ethernet can be switched and easily transmitted over relatively long distances.

The SSDs in present-day MacBook Pros and non-pro iMacs can read/write data far faster than 10Gb/s.

auxio 19 Years · 2766 comments

Soli said:

10GigE is a head scratcher, to me. It’s slower than both USB and WiFi, by costa more and is much bulkier, despite GigE being a longstanding standard that faster than both for a very long time.

Are you talking about latency? Because 10GigE has far more bandwidth than USB and WiFi, and that's the big appeal of it. It also supports much longer runs of cabling than USB, which makes it more suited for wiring up large buildings. Different target markets.

pcmofo 7 Years · 6 comments

Soli said:

10GigE is a head scratcher, to me. It’s slower than both USB and WiFi, by costa more and is much bulkier, despite GigE being a longstanding standard that faster than both for a very long time.

I’d love for my wired Macs and wired NAS to have a 10GigE connection but I’m not even sure that’s a feasible option for consumer-grade equipment.

Is there a reason for that?

10GbE is significantly faster than WiFi. I have a Ubiquiti AC HD which is one of the fastest available AP's out there. This is rated at 1733 Mbps by Ubiquiti. But that's a lie. That's theoretical max not accounting for overhead, interference, etc etc. IRL you are lucky if it can push 400mbps, less than half of regular wired gigabit. I just upgraded my network with a single workstation and server connected to my switch with 10Gb connections. Before I was getting 115MB/s wired transfer, (close to the max of 125MB/s) and now I am getting over 900MB/s, compare that to my wifi connected directly to the same switch at ~50MB/s and wired 10GbE is nearly 20x faster than the fastest WiFi. It's great that someone has come out with a single product to go from Thunderbolt to 10GbE for this price. A PCI-e card with a RJ-45 connector goes for around $200 alone.

Also, according to the specs on USB 3.1 and 3.1 gen 2 (https://www.everythingusb.com/speed.html) even gen 2 can't touch 10Gb in real wold applications. I have a NAS that I access over 10GbE for video editing and it's faster than every other remote solution except for very expensive external SSD arrays and it has multiple TB of storage. It's my understanding that many video production houses are setup this way so multiple editors can access the same data.