What dowload speeds is the Apple USB Ethernet Adapter capable of?
What is iPerf3
iPerf3 is a tool for active measurements of the maximum achievable bandwidth on IP networks.
Setting up iPerf3
You need two different nodes (computers) on your network. They can be macOS, Windows, BSD, or Linux; it really doesn't matter. Ideally, you want to connect via Ethernet; WiFi isn't recommended unless of course you're evaluating your WiFi bandwidth.
You can obtain the downloadable binaries from https://iperf.fr/ or install via the following:
- MacPorts -
port install iperf3 - Homebrew -
brew install iperf3
Other Operating Systems
- FreeBSD -
pkg add iperfor via portscd /usr/local/ports/benchmarks/ && make install clean - Ubuntu & Debian Distros:
apt-get iperf3 -
RedHat, CentOS, Fedora, etc:
yum install iperf. You may need the EPEL repositories (yum install epel-release) There's two components - a server and a client.These commands are provided as a convenience; be sure to reference the user documentation for your specific OS regarding software installation.
Once installed on two different computers ideally on the exact same subnet on the same swtich run one instance as a server and the other as a client:
iPerf Server
% iperf3 -s
-----------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on 5201
-----------------------------------------------------------
iPerf Client
% iperf3 -c IP <Address/Hostname>
Connecting to host node1, port 5201
[ 7] local 192.168.1.33 port 55455 connected to 192.168.1.23 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 7] 0.00-1.00 sec 65.1 MBytes 546 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 1.00-2.00 sec 59.6 MBytes 500 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 2.00-3.00 sec 62.3 MBytes 522 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 3.00-4.00 sec 61.8 MBytes 519 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 4.00-5.00 sec 61.5 MBytes 516 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 5.00-6.00 sec 59.2 MBytes 497 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 6.00-7.00 sec 60.6 MBytes 509 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 7.00-8.00 sec 59.7 MBytes 501 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 8.00-9.00 sec 62.6 MBytes 525 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 9.00-10.00 sec 64.4 MBytes 540 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 7] 0.00-10.00 sec 617 MBytes 518 Mbits/sec sender
[ 7] 0.00-10.00 sec 615 MBytes 516 Mbits/sec receiver
iperf Done.
The Results
You should see a similar output table on both the server and the client. From what this is telling me is that on a virtualized Gigabit Ethernet adapter, I'm getting about half of my bandwidth ~500Mbits throughput. I'm assuming that's due to overhead of "going up and down" networking stack of the the virtualized adapter.