Save 13% Off: Belkin F5D5055 Gigabit USB 2.0 Network Adapter Review & Ratings

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Belkin F5D5055 Gigabit USB 2.0 Network Adapter? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Belkin F5D5055 Gigabit USB 2.0 Network Adapter. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Belkin F5D5055 Gigabit USB 2.0 Network Adapter Review

This adapter does not work out of the box with Mac OS X 10.6. Some people claim it works out of the box, some claim that it does not work at all. The truth is that this USB adapter used to work at some point, but subsequently stopped doing so due to incompatible OS upgrade. So, you'll NEED some drivers, after all.
So, I risked my dollars and decided to figure out for myself instead of reading reviews. After trying some Sustainable Networks drivers (USBAx8817x_103b13 worked, but the transfer speed was unacceptable), I installed Belkin's own "BETA" drivers available on their official support site.
With Belkin "BETA" drivers from 2008 it worked. That is, despite their note that the drivers are for 10.5 (Leopard), not for 10.6 (Snow Leopard). So, my advise for Mac OS X owners would be to go to Belkin's site, download the drivers and be done with it.
(UPDATE Jan 30 2011: Instead of Belkin drivers, download the AX88178 drivers from Asix Electronics web site. These are more recent ones and are much more stable!)
Notes:
1. The Ethernet part of this adapter seemed a bit flaky at first. I had to plug it in and out a couple of times until it synced at 1000baseT speed. Once it synced at 100baseT and another at measly 10 mbits/s. Manually selecting 1000baseT worked, but the speed was unacceptable. After the third plug-unplug it synced properly and was doing so ever since. So it might have been a local glitch of my network. Just be sure to try plugging/unplugging a couple of times to make sure it is up to full gigabit physical speed.
(Also, this flakiness might explain why I wasn't successful running with Sustainable Networks' drivers, but who really cares.) (UPD: The Asix drivers fixed the instability problem, see the above UPDATE and the comments).
1. The sustained transfer speeds were 20-30+ megabytes per second, depending on the server I used. I didn't try to push farther (up to theoretically possible ~50 megabytes per second, due to USB limitations), but the bottleneck was probably the remote disk drive speed, not the Ethernet. For example, I did not try to enable jumbo frames.
3. The adapter itself is unexpectedly small, that was a pleasure to see. The picture doesn't do justice to the donglet. The adapter can be plugged directly into the USB port or through a small USB extension cable, included.
4. I ended up plugging the adapter into a USB 2.0 hub which also connects a keyboard, touchpad and webcam. The hub itself then connects to my MacBook Air. Works like a charm, with almost no loss of speed (

Belkin F5D5055 Gigabit USB 2.0 Network Adapter Overview

USB - 1 x RJ-45 10/100/1000Base-T - 10Mbps Ethernet, 100Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1Gbps Gigabit Ethernet - Twisted Pair

Want to learn more information about Belkin F5D5055 Gigabit USB 2.0 Network Adapter?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now