On a really good day, real-world performance is two-thirds of that advertised link speed, but half is more common. WiFi speeds top out anywhere between 54 and 450Mbps. Ethernet on the other hand, pretty much always works, and when it doesn't, debugging is straightforward.

Wireless networking problems are notoriously hard to debug, even for specialists. Most of the time, WiFi works very well, but sometimes it doesn't, and often there isn't much that you can do about that. Unfortunately, WiFi lacks two things: reliability and speed. Apple later released version 1.2.1 of the update, which turns the TBGE adapter from the world's smallest paperweight into a powerful network interface.īut why do we even need wired Ethernet in 2012? Most of the time, a WiFi network is more than adequate. The Thunderbolt 1.2 software that contains a driver for the new adapter created kernel panics and boot problems for many users and was pulled within hours. The new adapter is also compatible with last year's MacBook Air (which was relegated to the USB Fast Ethernet adapter until now) as well as other Macs with Thunderbolt ports.

At WWDC last week, Apple released the $29 Thunderbolt Gigabit Ethernet (TBGE) adapter to go with the new ultra-slim MacBook Pro.

Ethernet adapter for mac pro