DriverGenius CU200 | USB 3.0 to Dual Gigabit Ethernet Adapter for Windows 11 & macOS Ventura 13.0.1

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 20, 2022

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

I run a Plex server on an Intel NUC which then pulls the media from my NAS server, I have found this to be the best way for running a faster server when it comes to streaming over the internet to my family as the NUC can use hardware transcoding where my NAS can't. The only problem was that the NUC only had one RJ45 network connection so I ordered this in the hope that it would work to balance the network over the duel 1gb outputs to reduce any bottleneck in the connection.
On opening, this unit has been made very well with a compact casing housing two RJ45 connections plus a USB3 port so I don't even loose the original USB3 port that this connects to. Each of the available sockets align perfectly to the case and feel solidly in place so there are no problems in connecting the cables.
After connecting the USB to my NUC, I ran two CAT8 cables to my network switch from this device and used the passthrough USB3 for the keyboard as that was plugged into the original port. Once everything was setup and running the extra network ports showed up straight away in the operating system, I then changed some settings as required in the NUC to use the new ports which now gives me a balanced 2gb connection to the rest of my network.
So far I haven't noticed a huge difference although the media files do seem to starting faster but so far I haven't required more than 1gb from the NUC so hopefully when several people are streaming high bandwidth files together this should stop any buffering and give a faster access to the media.

Excellent Device with an easy setup.

Recommended.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 11, 2022
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
There are several reasons why this could be useful, not least as a replacement for a faulty or non-functional Ethernet port on a laptop, desktop etc. While replacing the Ethernet card on a desktop is usually easy and feasible, doing so for a laptop is complex and expensive needing professional involvement. It is also capable of far more.

The "USB 3.0 to Dual Port Gigabit Ethernet Adapter for Business or IT Professionals, CU200" can allow two routers or other network feeds to be connected to a computer, either to gain the advantage of greater speed where software supports the ability or to choose which source is used. It would be of major relevance for users of virtual machines including software developers and testers of applications or operating systems etc for performance, errors etc or simply during the alpha and beta phases of their development to see how they react and relate to other software.

While it needs a USB 3.0 port for connection, it has a pass-through so the number of ports available to the user is maintained. The device is larger and heavier than some may expect and needs its driver and support software to be installed; supplied on a mini-CD but, for those without access to an optical drive, there is both a printed download link and a QR code in the manual (and the packaging sleeve).

While there are several mini-hubs that offer an Ethernet connection plus combinations of USB, video and possibly audio ports of various types and capabilities they require a USB-C port and not all portables or desktops have one. This is for those exceptions. There are less expensive USB 3.x single-port Gigabit Ethernet adapters, most being plug-and-play, but this is the only one known to support virtual machines which were once personally essential but not recently; for those who need the option, it may be a saviour.

Is this support on Linux devices?

Working well with OSX, FreeBSD, and Fedora Linux. :)

Transfer rates from a local file server are consistently in the 70-95MB/s range, indicating good performance.

Would get again.

As a note, for OSX use the drivers from the chipset manufacturer:

[...]

Install the drivers before plugging it in, and it'll work fine. For FreeBSD/Linux, the needed drivers are already built into the OS so no downloaded was needed.