Club 3D Launches 2.5 GbE USB Type-A & USB Type-C Dongles
by Anton Shilov on March 21, 2019 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Networking
- Realtek
- Club3D
- NBASE-T
- 2.5GBase-T
- 2.5 GbE
Club 3D has introduced its 2.5 GbE dongles featuring a USB Type-A or a USB Type-C interface. The adapters are designed to add 2.5 Gbps wired Ethernet to PCs without internal GbE controllers. For laptops, this is becoming increasingly more widespread.
Club 3D’s CAC-1420 (USB Type-A to 2.5 GbE) and CAC-1520 (USB Type-C to 2.5 GbE) are extremely simplist devices: they feature an RJ-45 connector on one side, and a USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) interface on another. The dongles are USB-powered and therefore do not need any external power adapters. As for compatibility, they can work with PCs running Apple’s MacOS X 10.6 ~ 10.14 as well as Microsoft’s Windows 8/10.
The manufacturer does not disclose which 2.5 GbE controller it uses, but it is highly likely that the dongles use Realtek’s RTL8156 controller specifically designed for such applications. The only other option is from Aquantia, who only offers a joint 2.5/5 GbE controller.
Apart from notebooks without a GbE port that have to work in corporate environments with wired networks (including those that use 2.5, 5, and 10 GbE networks), Club 3D’s new adapters can be used to upgrade older desktop PCs that need a faster Ethernet connectivity.
Club 3D has not announced pricing of the 2.5 GbE CAC-1420 and CAC-1520 adapters.
Related Reading:
- Things We Missed: Realtek Has 2.5G Gaming Ethernet Controllers
- AKiTiO Thunderbolt 3 Dock Pro with Aquantia 10 GbE
- AKiTiO’s Thunder3 10G Adapter Now Available: TB3-to-10GbE for Sub-$300
Source: Club 3D (via Hermitage Akihabara)
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Notmyusualid - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
In 1998, I was connecting 2.5Gb/s waves across the Atlantic, and not many per fiber pair either. Token ring was still around, 10Base2 still being deployed in the network management side of it all.Today, my laptop has 2.5G & Desktop 10G in the home.
Next week its off to Asia for a 400Gb/s wave 'line-up'.
Rumours of 600Gb/s & 800Gb/s waves abound.
Even I'm surprised.
CharonPDX - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
This would be great for my home server. It does media serving duties in addition to other server duties, and there are times (when both TVs and another computer/phone or two are streaming from it,) that it saturates its 1 GbE connection.I just got a router that has one 2.5 GbE port, so definitely picking one of these up to connect to the server! (Of note: It's an older iMac with a fast SSD and a large spinning internal drive, plus a Thunderbolt drive array. It is usually used headless, using Apple's "Target Display Mode" to act as an extra display for my laptop rather than displaying its own screen. Its TB ports are full with the array and laptop connection, so a USB 2.5 GbE would be great.)
damianrobertjones - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
"add 2.5 Gbps wired Ethernet to PCs without internal GbE controllers"But what if you already have a 1GbE port? Will I not be allowed to buy this? Will my computer explode?
damianrobertjones - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
" Club 3D’s new adapters can be used to upgrade older desktop PCs that need a faster Ethernet connectivity."Phew.
katsetus - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
Includes installation CDDriver Software installation is required
No Driver downloads found
why is china like this
Valantar - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
... because the product isn't launched yet and drivers will be available over Windows Update, from Realtek, and likely from Club3D once the dongles actually launch?abufrejoval - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
So where are the Aquantia based USB 3 dongles hiding? The chips seem to have been available for a long time but USB adapters are nowhere to be found.I like to upgrade from a USB 3 1GBit Ethernet adapter which I use frequently enough and a 12 Port NBase-T switch from Buffalo as backbone in the home lab so I'd rather spend a few bucks extra for something capable of 5Gbit, even if currently I only have one gaming laptop capable of sustaining that speed that cannot be upgraded with a PCIe NIC.
Yes, most of the time you don't need that speed, but I've needed it often enough to keep looking and since it's external you can stick it where and when you need it.
awonglk - Sunday, May 5, 2019 - link
Does anyone know an online retailer that has started to sell this? It's not May 2019, but i can't seem to find any online stores that actually sell this yet (e.g. Amazon / Newegg)abufrejoval - Thursday, July 25, 2019 - link
Selling now!Just ordered 3 from Mindfactory with type A connector to use on a test systems cluster for a storage and east-west while the on-board Gbit will be used for north-south traffic. They are a pretty good match for the 100% silent Atom J5005s I'm using there (don't know if they could sustain the 5Gbit the SSDs behind can deliver, but 10Gbit fails because no I/O is bigger than single lane PCIe 2 on Atoms).
It's pumping 300MB/s on a USB-C variant I got from DeLock, but that one requires extra active adapter for USB-C to USB-A. This is the first with a variant that plugs into the more common USB-A that I have seen and it seems, smaller and cheaper (€37 with VAT) as well.
Pretty sure it's RealTek, too. For some reason the Aquantia USB chips never materialized in products or at these price levels.