WisdPi WP-UT5 is the first Realtek RTL8157 5Gbps Ethernet (5GbE) to USB 3.2 adapter to make it to market, following the launch of Realtek RTL8126 5Gbps Ethernet PCIe and M.2 adapters last June, and the announcement for both the RTL8126 and RTL8157 chips at Computer 2023 last year.
While the RTL8126 dongles and cards are fairly cheap at around $16 on average and as low as $12, the WisdPi WP-UT5 is sold at a premium for about $35 on AliExpress, but we can expect the price to down come as more companies introduce 5GbE to USB 3.2 adapters. For reference, the 2.5GbE variants based on RTL8156(BG) can be had for about $20 on Amazon.
WisdPi WP-UT5 specifications:
- Chip – Realtek RTL8157
- USB
- USB 3.2 Type-C female port
- A-C and C-C cables to support hosts with USB Type-C or Type-A ports
- Ethernet
- 10/10/100/2500/5000 Mbps Ethernet
- Supports 5G Lite (2.5Gbps data rate) mode, 2.5G Lite (1Gbps data rate) and GIGA Lite (500Mbps data rate) mode
- Auto-Negotiation with Extended Next Page capability (XNP)
- Compatible with NBASE-T TM Alliance PHY Specification
- Supports pair swap/polarity/skew correction
- Crossover Detection & Auto-Correction
- Supports CDC-ECM & CDC-NCM
- Supports hardware CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) function
- Supports ECMA-393 ProxZzzy Standard for sleeping hosts
- IEEE Standards
- IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.3u, IEEE802.3ab
- IEEE 802.1P Layer 2 Priority Encoding
- IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging
- IEEE 802.3az (Energy Efficient Ethernet)
- IEEE 802.3bz (5G Base-T)
- Full Duplex flow control (802.3x)
- Software Offloading
- Microsoft NDIS5, NDIS6 Checksum Offload (IPv4, IPv6, TCP, UDP) and Segmentation Task
- Large send v1 and Large send v2 offload support
- Supports jumbo frame to 16k bytes
- Supports Protocol Offload (ARP & NS)
- Microsoft AOAC (Always On Always Connected)/Modern Standby
- Supports 32-set 128-byte Wake-Up Frame pattern exact matching
- Supports link change wake-up
- Supports Microsoft WPD (Wake Packet Detection)
- Intel CPPM (Converged Platform Power Management)
- Supports L1 with 3ms BESL (USB 2.0)
- Dynamic LTM messaging (USB 3.2Gen1/2)
- Supports U1/U2/U3 (USB 3.2 Gen1/2)
- Supports selective suspend
- Power Consumption – Up to 1.5 Watts (for reference, 2.5GbE consumes about 700 mW)
- Dimensions – 82 x 27.4 x 15.2mm
- Materials
- Aluminum case with “protection of corrosion”
- Nylon-braided cable
- Temperature Range
- Operating – Up to +70°C
- Storage – -55 to +125°C
The WP-UT5 supports Windows, Linux, and MacOS 10.7 or greater operating systems, and if needed, the drivers can be downloaded from the Realtek website. The USB 3.2 to 5Gbps Ethernet adapter ships with a 16cm USB 3.2 Type-C to Type-C cable, a 16cm USB 3.2 Type-C to Type-A cable, and a user manual.
Besides AliExpress, you can also purchase the RTL8156 USB 3.2 dongle on WisdPi website for the same price, and there’s also a $5 coupon code B5H8BWKS7VTT valid for the 50 first orders.
A challenge may be finding a 5Gbps Ethernet switch, as searching for “5Gbps Ethernet switch” will return results for “2.5Gbps Ethernet switch”, and many 10GbE switches won’t support 5GbE at all. So you would have to double-check the specs of the switch first. One option is the D-Link DMS-106XT 6-port switch ($209 on Amazon), but you’ll find more 5GbE switches on Geizhals since they have a proper search function (thanks Thomas!).
Thanks to John-Michael for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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