Sonnet adapter brings 5Gb Ethernet to USB-C MacBook owners

Sonnet Technologies aims to provide faster wired network connectivity by leveraging Ethernet speeds together with the Solo5G adapter that uses the USB-A, USB-C, or Thunderbolt ports on MacBook.

While all of Apple's current desktop Macs feature an Ethernet port, none of its notebook computers do. Sonnet Technologies has launched an adapter that will allow MacBook Pro and MacBook Air users to connect to Ethernet networks via their USB-C port.

The Solo5G utilizes NBASE-T, a standard that brings 2.5 and 5 Gbit/sec speeds to existing Ethernet cabling.

Sonnet claims that when used with a supported multigigabit or 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch, the Solo5G will deliver between 250% and 400% the speed of regular Gigabit Ethernet over the same wiring.

The Solo5G adapter comes with both 0.5-meter USB-C to USB-C , and USB-C to USB-A cables. Sonnet also provides a Mac installer which it claims uniquely saves users having to set it up via the Terminal.

Sonnet Solo5G

Sonnet Technologies' Solo5G is available now for $79.99.

The Solo5G follows the company's recent Thunderbolt 3 card reader, and a similar USB to Ethernet adapter from QNAP.

3 Comments

wozwoz 13 Years · 263 comments

About 4 years ago

That is very cool indeed: compact, silent and affordable! Now to find some affordable 10G switches, and achieve the move from 1G Ethernet to maybe 4 or 5 times faster!

razorpit 17 Years · 1793 comments

Nice it has interchangeable cables.

Pylons 8 Years · 32 comments

Very good! We need cheaper multi-gigabit solutions. This is about 20% cheaper than QNAP and TRENDnet so it's definitely improving! Plus Sonnet tends to have significantly better Mac support.

Here are prices from the competition (today's prices from Amazon):

$105 QNAP QNA-UC5G1T 5GbE

$103 TRENDnet TUC-ET5G, 5GbE

$49 TRENDnet TUC-ET2G, only 2.5GbE

$47 Club 3D Cac-1520, only 2.5GbE

$46 Asustor AS-U2.5G, only 2.5GbE

Prices for 10GbE switches are slowly improving, but SFP+ is still cheapest (and runs a lot cooler):

$131 MikroTik CRS305-1G-4S+IN, 4x 10GbE SFP+, 1x 1GbE RJ45

$189 Netgear GS110EMS, 2x multi-gigabit (2.5/5/10 GbE) RJ45, 8x 1GbE RJ45

$189 QNAP QSW-308-1C, 2-3x* 10GbE SFP+, 1x multi-gigabit (2.5/5/10 GbE) RJ45 (*3rd SFP+ is shared with RJ45 port)

$245 MikroTik CRS309-1G-8S+IN, 8x 10GbE SFP+, 1x 1GbE RJ45
$269 Netgear MS510TX, 1x 10GbE SFP+, 1x 10GbE RJ45, 2x 5GbE RJ45, 2x 2.5GbE RJ45, 4x 1GbE RJ45

$349 Netgear XS505M, 4x multi-gigabit (2.5/5/10 GbE) RJ45, 1x 10GbE SFP+

$409 MikroTik CRS326-24S+2Q+RM, 24x 10GbE SFP+, 4x 40GbE QSFP

It's interesting how even most PC motherboard vendors still stick with 1GbE, which launched over 20 years ago, considering that 2.5GbE controllers cost less than $5. For example, the Intel i225 costs $2.4: https://www.servethehome.com/current-intel-i225-2-5gbe-nics-are-missing-big-feature/

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