What's the maximum LAN speed with the Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter on my MacBook Pro?

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Level 4

1,389 points

What's the maximum LAN speed with the Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter on my MacBook Pro?

While I was at Yodobashi Camera yesterday, I got a Thunderbolt to Gigabit ethernet adapter for my MacBook Pro. I figure, since I'm paying for the high speed fiber optic (Sony Nuro), why limit my self to wi-fi speeds at home?

Before connecting the adapter, via wi-fi it the speed was 143.8 Mbps down and 181.5 Mbps up.

After connecting the adapter and making a direct LAN connection to the router, the speed is 783.2 Mbps down and 940.1 Mbps up.

I'm certainly happy with the speed, but since Sony Nuro is supposed to be 2 Gbps down and 1 Gbps up I was wondering what the maximum possible is with this computer and adapter. Before asking the provider I was curious what the maximum specs where.

The ether cable is a 3 m category 6.

Thanks,

doug

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), i5, 512 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM

Posted on Dec 18, 2014 4:05 PM

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Answer 1

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Dec 18, 2014 4:22 PM in response to Doug Lerner2

Take a look at …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates

The 'local area network' section has this…

bits/s bytes/s

Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T) 1 Gbit/s 125 MB/s

Your 'almost 1GB' speed seems like it is close to the maximum that ethernet can carry. You would need to disable all other devices on the network & retest when your Mac isn't using the network to get the best accuracy.

Speeds stated on wikipedia are maximum theoretical, usually they are lower in reality.

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Answer 2

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,389 points

Dec 18, 2014 5:16 PM in response to Drew Reece

Yes, you are probably right. Also, even on this one Mac I had multiple browsers open.

I wonder why Sony Nuro can advertise 2 Gbps download though if nobody's home computer can actually achieve that speed. I'm also a bit curious why the download speed reported (using Nuro's own speed test page) is always a bit lower than the upload speed. I would have expected the opposite.

At any rate, these aren't speeds to complain about. And only $40/month. I don't think people typically have home fiber optic speeds like that in the U.S.

Thanks,

doug

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Answer 3

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Dec 18, 2014 6:36 PM in response to Doug Lerner2

It's not really your computer that is getting the 2Gbps download - it is the router/ modem.

If you hooked better/ different hardware up you could probably push those speeds around your network too. The trouble is that most residential hardware is gigabit ethernet not fibre. Fibre cards & cable are expensive in comparison.

The existing hardware may allow you to 'bond or aggregate' multiple ethernet connections into one link to get more speed over ethernet. Obviously this requires more complex routers, switches & a network admin to set it up 🙂

Those speeds sound nice, this bottleneck will mean that other devices on you network can't choke up the whole connection & make other users sad.

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