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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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. Reply