Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adaptor

Reviews for Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adaptor

Customer Reviews and Ratings

3.5 out of 5 stars

Based on 84 reviews

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Works if you can find the Thunderbolt 1.2 update

    • Written by from Kentfield

    This adapter requires an update to the AppleBCM5701Ethernet plugin to work. That update was present in the thunderbolt software update 1.2 package. Said update was pulled from the automatic update list due to it crashing non-thunderbolt systems such as old macbook pros. I haven't read a report of any problems for us macbook air users, and it works great on my 2011 macbook air. If you're lucky enough to have grabbed a copy of the update from apple's KB article before it was pulled from there as well, you should be able to use the adapter. Presumably apple will fix this big error in a day or so with a newer thunderbolt update.

    If you know what you're doing, you could always backup your IONetworkingFamily kext before applying the update, and then restore just that kext it if your system crashes from the update.

    Nice performance with this dongle - I get 900Mbps throughput. Driver (and broadcom's specs) indicate jumbo frame support, but I haven't tried it. Jumbo frames not really necessary IMO since the CPU is beefy enough to handle high packet/second data rates.

    Finally a cheap way to get data on&off a macbook air at speeds above USB 2.

    184 of 203 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    It works, but

    • Written by from Coquitlam

    It works out of the box on my MacBook Air 13' - 2012, but sometimes it will hang the Mac when hot-plugged.

    54 of 55 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Works great! (But don't buy it for MBA!!!)

    • Written by from Vancouver

    Why? This is nothing wrong with the product at all and it works great! The problem is... if you are using Macbook Air and you need to connect to extra monitor with thunderbolt you are out of luck. Either have this or the thunderbolt to DVI/HDMI adpter. I never thought of this until I bought it went home and had the "Ahhhh moment". Get the USB version instead. If you never care about extra monitor ever at all or you don't need to do presentation on bigger screens then sure go ahead.

    65 of 82 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Works.

    • Written by from Rochester

    Works perfectly with my new MBP with retina. Fast and effective.

    21 of 23 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Works great, what else is there to say?

    • Written by from Fort Macleod

    Works as advertised, gives the MBA a Ethernet port for when you are at a hotel/friends house or whatever the occasion may be. Make sure you have the Thunderbolt 1.2.1 update installed or else this won't work.

    Loses 1 star because it doesn't work in Windows (Boot Camp) yet.

    22 of 25 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Wicked Fast, but needs to be on power!

    • Written by from Airdrie

    I thought I had a faulty one, as on my MacBook Air it didn't work - it randomly came up as a thunderbolt device, but no ethernet, or not at all.

    I then tried it on power, and "pop" - it just worked, as expected... and it is very, very fast. copying files onto the Air with it's SSD I was getting a nice solid 45Mb a second.

    This is now part of my carry around kit for the laptop - excellent when you need a little more "oomph" than you can get with the Wireless.

    21 of 26 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    plug and play

    • Written by from Manchester Center

    Works on 2012 Macbook Air and mid 2011 iMac (EMC#2428) both with Mountain Lion (10.8.2). Plug and play, no drivers.

    Does NOT work with Wireshark! Wireshark does not recognize the thunderbolt ethernet adapter. Hence the 4 star rating. If you don't need wireshark or packet capture, then it's great. I prefer this over the USB to Fast Ethernet adapter because its faster (1000Mbps versus the 10/100 of the USB model), and it doesn't take up a precious USB port (since the Macbook Air only has 2 USB ports).

    Enjoy!

    14 of 14 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Works very well. No problems.

    • Written by from tampa

    Update the thunderbolt firmware to latest. That's it works very well.

    13 of 15 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Macbook air 2011

    • Written by from basingstoke

    Initially I couldn't get this to work as even though it was showing as connected in the system report and I could see the port on my network switch was up OSX was not seeing the adapter as a network interface.

    In the end I fixed it by downloading Thunderbolt update 1.21 from the apple site (software update claimed no updates available)

    I would have posted the link but it seems the review system won't actually let me.

    6 of 10 people found this useful

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