Getting the Realtek RTL8157 to Work in Windows 11
Since this is a NIC based on the newer Realtek RTL8157, we ran into some of the same driver challenges as with the WAVLINK. You most likely will need to install drivers to get this one to work. Step one was getting drivers from the Realtek website. We have heard folks say that Windows 7 and Windows 10 can be problematic. We are running on Windows 11, so if you are using another OS, it might be worth taking a second to do a search on how the drivers are working at this point.
After downloading the drivers, we get a thorough (Windows XP styled?) installer.
Once that is installed, we have a 5GbE link.
Something to keep in mind that there are switch ports that do not support 5GbE so if you are still having issues, that could be the reason.
One item we noticed was that the ASUS ROG NUC system worked with this out-of-the-box, but the reason was simple, we still had the drivers installed from the WAVLINK. When we tried this on a Minisforum MS-01 that did not have the drivers, we had to repeat the process above.
WisdPi WP-UT5 USB-C to 5GbE Adapter Performance
Just checking the performance, it was good.
We also tried an Apple Mac Mini and saw similar results.
The USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps seems to be able to handle the 5Gbps port without issue even with USB overhead. This is where the older Gen1 adapters simply could not keep up.
Final Words
The driver situation for these Realtek RTL8157 USB to 5GbE NICs is still not great. It needs to work out-of-the-box in all OSes. This is something that usually gets better with time whenever there are new NICs. Until that is fixed, we want to make sure folks know about it.
The option to use USB Type-A or Type-C connections is one some may find useful. If you are only going to use this with Type-C, then saving a few dollars for the WAVLINK is probably better.
Now, the big question is when will these fall in price? Hopefully with more competition in the market we get lower prices. Usually Realtek USB NIC chips do not cost a lot, so at $40 there is some significan margin in these. Or in other words, more competition can help drive the pricing down. Hopefully we see more options soon, but this is one we are glad we picked up for the Type-A option.
Where to Buy
If you just want to check prices, we purchased ours on Amazon (Affiliate link.)
Good to see it similarly shares the throughput of the Wavlink model. I think it’d be beneficial also seeing Linux tested in such a review. The review makes passing mention at limited multi-OS driver compatibility but I expect the market for these 5Gbps models is largely for local home networking (NAS and such), which is very often Linux-based.
I saw a user on Linux v6.11 kernel and official drivers able to run this for example but the experience varies depending how up-to-date a user’s system/drivers are.
Those using full size systems and/or second-hand enterprise gear often have already made the leap to 10GbE. While the attractiveness of such 5GbE USB NICs are they’re low power and offer supplementary connection for systems which lack extra PCIe slots/room (eg: pre-built NAS, SFF). Perfect for TinyMiniMicro based servers and those with restrictive ITX cases.
At this point how many silicon vendors are even doing USB NICs north of 1GbE?
Aquantia was doing some work in the area(with maximum performance somewhat hobbled by those being 5Gb USB 3 parts) years ago at this point(STH did a 3 adapter roundup on Jan 1 of 2021); but that product line doesn’t seem to have been what Marvell was especially interested in when they bought them out; and that line is somewhere between cancelled and on life support.
Is it basically a Realtek show now? Just not enough money in it when TB always gives you the ability to throw any PCIe chipset at a problem if the customer isn’t desperately cost sensitive and the desperately cost sensitive are likely OK with the nearly-free-after-packaging 1GbE stuff?
fuzzyfuzzyfungus, I’m not sure that there’s a huge difference between 1GbE and 2.5GbE+ in terms of vendors. Aren’t most 1GbE USB3 adapters Realtek or ASIX? I think there are a couple others (Microchip?) but I don’t think there’s a ton of competition there regardless. To that end ASIX did release a 2.5GbE chip (AX88279) last year. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they add 5GbE should adoption increase.
Honestly PCie doesn’t fare much better. Isn’t it Realtek, Marvell, and Intel?
Thanks for your reviews of this and other 5GbE network adapters. I think it might be interesting if you could also do some latency testing of the USB adapters in particular. A while back I compared a few Realtek 2.5GbE USB adapters to PCIe adapters and found that while their throughput was mostly as advertised, their latency or round trip time was significantly higher (~5x) compared to their PCIe counterparts. It seemed to me that this was driver specific (I was using the mainline driver in the Linux kernel, not an out-of-tree module) and not just USB overhead because the latency increase was not nearly as high on other 1GbE USB adapters. So, I’d be interested to see how the new 5GbE adapters perform in this regard.
This is quite nice for a portable device, or even for a desktop, to be honest. Much better than a Thunderbolt-based 10G NIC, which is great for a fixed installation, but way too bulky and power hungry to be carried around in a bag.
I recently bought this adapter. So far, I only tested a 2.5Gbit connection, as I’m waiting for the arrival of a 5Gbit SFP+ for my router. If you want to use this adapter on Linux, you must use the driver from the Realtek website. Kernel v6.11 detects the adapter without the driver, but the device would be unstable.
Regarding latency. I did a quick ping comparison versus my Thunderbolt Lenovo docking station:
– docking station:
100 packets transmitted, 100 received, 0% packet loss, time 101382ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.238/0.357/0.474/0.042 ms
– USB adapter:
100 packets transmitted, 100 received, 0% packet loss, time 101357ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.234/0.371/0.810/0.070 ms