MacBook Pro 14/16 ain't so Pro without Ethernet dongle minimally ...

[mr_roboto]

Is there a USB-C adapter available which is using AQC113C chip? I would like to buy an Ethernet adapter for my MacBook Pro 14

This is impossible since the AQC113 family of chips uses PCI Express for its host side interface, not USB.

I really liked the iMac 2021 Ethernet built-in powerbrick solution. It was awesome if it was included with the new MBP 2021.

This too is impossible, there are unsolvable engineering problems (or at least they're unsolvable without fundamentally changing other things).

It's not because of interrupted connections, though. It's because there just aren't enough connections of the right kind in the right places to make it work.

• The MacBook power brick is a USB type C power supply.
  • Problem: USB type C doesn't have an Ethernet 'alt' mode
  • Solution(?): Integrate a USB-to-Ethernet chip into the power brick
    • Problem with the solution: If customers use the included USB-C to MagSafe 3 cable, Ethernet won't work since MagSafe doesn't support high speed data connections

On that last problem - people seem to assume MagSafe and the iMac's magnetic power connector are much the same things because both involve magnets. But they're quite different. The iMac connector supports Ethernet through its power connector by hiding eight extra non-power contacts inside the connector's cylindrical shell. It also has a fancy rotary self-alignment system - magnetic and/or mechanical features guarantee the cable end rotates into the correct orientation before clicking home. It's possible to do this on the iMac since there's plenty of space for a large and complex connector, and there's no need to support an alternate method of connecting the power brick.

MacBooks need a much smaller magnetic connector, and the flexibility to use either a standard USB-C cable or the bundled USB-C to MagSafe cable with the included power brick. These constraints are very unfriendly to integrating Ethernet.

 

[Quu]

On 5Ghz Wifi networks, I get almost the same speeds as I would from being plugged in with ethernet, even when I'm a decent distance away from the router. If you're using ethernet, you're obviously going to be a short distance away from a router, switch, or mesh ap, so there's no real benefit for an ethernet port. If you have a garbage wifi router, then get a better one.

Personally I would have liked 10Gb built in. Every computer in my office is 10Gb capable and connected to a 16x10Gb switch. The internet is even over 1Gb to this building which I can access with the wired machines mentioned above.

Would be nice if there was an option even if it was BTO to add 10Gb ethernet to these laptops. Perhaps they could come with 1Gb or 2.5Gb stock with the option at order time to get 10Gb.

Like not to be funny but I paid £3,299 for this laptop. These are not cheap machines by any stretch of the imagination so having fast networking is a must. I was disappointed that the WiFi in even the 16" is only 2x2 and not 3x3 like the old Intel models. Sure the WiFi is faster (WiFi 6 instead of WiFi 5) but if it had been 3x3 WiFi 6 it would be able to go over 1Gb/s in real-world conditions. As it stands they max out around 860Mb/s in the real-world.

I'll probably invest in a new thunderbolt 4 dock eventually that has 10Gb built in, right now there's only one I think and it has some other downsides (low power for charging etc).

 

[Lammers]

IMHO it’s highly likely that the proportion of customers that actually have a genuine use case for 10GbE on a MBP is so tiny that it’s just not worth the investment in engineering, manufacturing, etc.

 

[Lammers]

Like not to be funny but I paid £3,299 for this laptop. These are not cheap machines by any stretch of the imagination so having fast networking is a must.

Clearly it’s not a must at all. These things are managing to sell pretty well without that.

 

[Quu]

Clearly it’s not a must at all. These things are managing to sell pretty well without that.

This is really a silly thing to say considering the only way to get macOS at all is to buy a Mac. People will live with many shortcomings to get access to the operating system.

It's like saying there was nothing wrong with the 2016-2019 MacBook Pro keyboards because they sold. Of course they sold, people who were invested in the ecosystem had no choice but to buy them.

IMHO it’s highly likely that the proportion of customers that actually have a genuine use case for 10GbE on a MBP is so tiny that it’s just not worth the investment in engineering, manufacturing, etc.

People who have a genuine use case for HDR on a laptop is the same and yet here we are with a 1600 nit peak brightness LCD. The same could be said for the ARM CPU driving these laptops. And yet Apple made that investment. I mean I could go on.

How many people are really even using Thunderbolt on their Macs? - Almost no PC's have them and people using them on PC even when they do have a Thunderbolt port is like 0.01%. People get by just fine without Thunderbolt but here we are with 3 of these ports on the new laptops etc

To be clear I appreciate these features and I do make use of them, but they're just as niche as having 10Gb networking would be and mostly aligned with pro users which is what the laptop is marketed at.

 

[profcutter]

While I too regret the lack of 10g Ethernet on these machines, or even a 1g Ethernet port, I do agree that we’re in the minority of buyers of the MacBook Pro. Mac Pro? That’s a different story. iMac Pro? Again, different story. If you want a large screen Mac laptop, your only choice is a MBP. That means most folks aren’t using 10g Ethernet, many would assume Ethernet is just a legacy cable you use to connect your wifi router to your cable box. Nothing wrong with different folks using the same machine. Everyone uses the USB C ports on these machines, most probably not to the Thunderbolt potential. Still, I’m not sure what the engineering constraints would have been to include an Ethernet port. I sincerely hope the idea was on the table and was left out due to engineering constraints.

 

[mr_roboto]

Personally I would have liked 10Gb built in. Every computer in my office is 10Gb capable and connected to a 16x10Gb switch. The internet is even over 1Gb to this building which I can access with the wired machines mentioned above.

Would be nice if there was an option even if it was BTO to add 10Gb ethernet to these laptops. Perhaps they could come with 1Gb or 2.5Gb stock with the option at order time to get 10Gb.

Like not to be funny but I paid £3,299 for this laptop. These are not cheap machines by any stretch of the imagination so having fast networking is a must.

OK, so you have a well developed sense of entitlement. Back here in the real world, there are engineering concerns.

Apple itself values 10GbE as only a $100 BTO option on the M1 Mac Mini. Why's it available there and not in the MacBook Pros? I can't know for sure because I don't work for Apple, directly or indirectly, but as an engineer I can make this informed guess: Internal volume and power budget. They're relatively abundant resources in the Mac Mini, not so much in the 16" and 14" MacBook Pro. Ethernet jacks and magnetics are bulky and 10GBase-T needs an inconvenient amount of power.

I'm sure that if Apple considered it at all, they decided it would be better for everyone (themselves and users) if the people with a hard requirement for 10GbE just put up with Thunderbolt adapters and docks.

Speaking of Thunderbolt, in your most recent post you tried to use it as an example of something Apple could have left out, but didn't, so why not build in 10GbE too? But this is exactly why Apple includes Thunderbolt: it's a universal solution for all niche high speed I/O interfaces which are impractical to build in for one reason or another.

Obviously Apple took that philosophy way too far in the 2016 Intel MBP, and have backtracked. But you have to acknowledge that the ports which came back (MagSafe, SD card, HDMI) are conveniently sized for the edge of a laptop, need little power, and have relatively broad appeal. You can't say any of that about 10Gbase-T.

 

[Quu]

OK, so you have a well developed sense of entitlement. Back here in the real world, there are engineering concerns.

Apple itself values 10GbE as only a $100 BTO option on the M1 Mac Mini. Why's it available there and not in the MacBook Pros? I can't know for sure because I don't work for Apple, directly or indirectly, but as an engineer I can make this informed guess: Internal volume and power budget. They're relatively abundant resources in the Mac Mini, not so much in the 16" and 14" MacBook Pro. Ethernet jacks and magnetics are bulky and 10GBase-T needs an inconvenient amount of power.

I'm sure that if Apple considered it at all, they decided it would be better for everyone (themselves and users) if the people with a hard requirement for 10GbE just put up with Thunderbolt adapters and docks.

Speaking of Thunderbolt, in your most recent post you tried to use it as an example of something Apple could have left out, but didn't, so why not build in 10GbE too? But this is exactly why Apple includes Thunderbolt: it's a universal solution for all niche high speed I/O interfaces which are impractical to build in for one reason or another.

Obviously Apple took that philosophy way too far in the 2016 Intel MBP, and have backtracked. But you have to acknowledge that the ports which came back (MagSafe, SD card, HDMI) are conveniently sized for the edge of a laptop, need little power, and have relatively broad appeal. You can't say any of that about 10Gbase-T.

Imagine calling someone entitled because they paid as much as a car for a computer and expected a little faster networking. My post was mainly about the WiFi downgrade from the previous model and not really about built in ethernet (which I said I was willing to pay more for!).

But anyway this is the same stuff I saw people say to others about the SD card reader before we got that back. And the sad thing is, photographers don't even want it anymore because all their high end DSLR's have WiFi built in with auto saving to their computer via WiFi network.

I'm more annoyed that the WiFi on it is only 2x2 and not 3x3 like the previous models. At-least then we'd have over 1Gbps capable WiFi which would be infinitely more useful for the longevity of these machines.

And yes I'm fully aware the 40Gb thunderbolt ports can be used for a multitude of things including 10Gbps ethernet adapters. I did mention this in my post. But you could also use adapters for SD Cards, HDMI out etc - We lost one Thunderbolt port to make room for these other connectors compared to the previous model so there is utility in adding a speciality port and giving up a universal port in Apples world.

As for the power consumption on 10GbE (RJ45/8CPC etc) Intel has the X710-T4L capable of 4.8 Watts for a single port running at maxed out performance. It uses less energy if running 1Gb or idle (< 0.1 idle, 3 Watts 1Gbps flat out). This is not something I suggest Apple add to the laptop. They can do better integrating the control portion into the SoC like they did with Thunderbolt, eliminating the need for separate and power hungry Thunderbolt chips.

I agree that 10GbE is a niche feature. But the laptop already has plenty of those and it's a pro system, getting video in and out of these machines at 1Gbps (via cheap Ethernet adapter) or over WiFi is painful. Thank goodness we do actually have available SFP+ and 10GbE ethernet adapters from Q-Nap.

By the way the Q-Nap SFP+ adapter is quite good, smaller than the others and SFP+ in general uses less energy than RJ45 for 10Gb.

 

[Lammers]

This is really a silly thing to say considering the only way to get macOS at all is to buy a Mac. People will live with many shortcomings to get access to the operating system.

It's like saying there was nothing wrong with the 2016-2019 MacBook Pro keyboards because they sold. Of course they sold, people who were invested in the ecosystem had no choice but to buy them.


People who have a genuine use case for HDR on a laptop is the same and yet here we are with a 1600 nit peak brightness LCD. The same could be said for the ARM CPU driving these laptops. And yet Apple made that investment. I mean I could go on.

How many people are really even using Thunderbolt on their Macs? - Almost no PC's have them and people using them on PC even when they do have a Thunderbolt port is like 0.01%. People get by just fine without Thunderbolt but here we are with 3 of these ports on the new laptops etc

To be clear I appreciate these features and I do make use of them, but they're just as niche as having 10Gb networking would be and mostly aligned with pro users which is what the laptop is marketed at.

There is a difference between a “shortcoming” and a “must”. You said that it’s a “must” for these laptops to have 10GbE and I argued that the evidence suggests otherwise. Even as a “shortcoming” it’s an extremely minor one, judging by the almost complete lack of people complaining about it in reviews and forums, which is of course a reflection of the relatively few people for whom 10GbE is relevant.

The issues with the butterfly keyboard are completely different. They impacted all users of the MBP and has been a key widespread criticism of that generation from the outset. You can’t put the absence of 10GbE in the same category.

Your other examples suffer from the same logic IMHO. Apple is investing in technologies - including HDR, ARM CPUs etc - that have broad impact and appeal to its customers. HDR isn’t a small niche technology used by very few, it has been commonplace for televisions and video streaming for some years. The same simply can’t be said for 10GbE which remains a technology limited to very niche use cases.

 

[Quu]

There is a difference between a “shortcoming” and a “must”. You said that it’s a “must” for these laptops to have 10GbE and I argued that the evidence suggests otherwise.

Please go back and reread my post. Here is a quote of it:

Like not to be funny but I paid £3,299 for this laptop. These are not cheap machines by any stretch of the imagination so having fast networking is a must. I was disappointed that the WiFi in even the 16" is only 2x2 and not 3x3 like the old Intel models.

Please tell me where in this sentence I said 10GbE is a must? - I did not. I said having fast networking is a must then I immediately lamented the fact the laptops have only a 2x2 WiFi radio setup while the previous Intel machines had a 3x3 setup. I would have very much liked WiFi 6 with a 3x3 setup.

As it stands the 2x2 setup means the performance is almost the same as my WiFi 5 3x3 setup on my old machine. But this laptop has a 2x faster SSD, 8x faster RAM, can do way better video editing and scrubbing of 4K content etc

Also I think it's a bit silly to be arguing about what is and is not a niche feature on a 3K laptop aimed at professionals. They stuck many niche features on this thing, the massive video transcoding logic for one, being able to edit like 7 streams of 8K footage, yadda yadda.

So what did I actually say about 10GbE?

Personally I would have liked 10Gb built in. [...] Would be nice if there was an option even if it was BTO to add 10Gb ethernet to these laptops. Perhaps they could come with 1Gb or 2.5Gb stock with the option at order time to get 10Gb.

Does that sound so unreasonable? I said, would have liked, nice to have. Not they have to add this, not it must be included. I have 10Gb to Thunderbolt 3 adapters already. Just like people had HDMI adapters and SD Card Readers and so on and so on. I would be willing to give them even more money to get it built in as a convenience, but it's not a must and I never said it was a must.

But it is what it is, guess I'm just entitled for saying it would be nice to have a feature that the iMac Pro, Mac Pro and Mac Mini all have in the MacBook Pro. Sheesh.

 

[mario0]

What Ethernet option would you prefer?

1. Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter and Thunderbolt 2 to Ethernet Adapter
2. Belkin USB-C Ethernet Adapter (from Apple Store)

 

[neko77]

What do you think about this adapter?

Solo10G (10GBASE-T 10Gb Ethernet Thunderbolt Adapter) - SONNETTECH

10GbE Thunderbolt adapter with NBASE-T support. Connects through a RJ45 10GbE port to 10GBASE-T 10GbE networks. For Thunderbolt 4 and 3 computers.

www.sonnettech.com

It's obviously very big, but apart from that, it seems to work fine. There are others alternatives like the ones from OWC or Calldigit. Anyone has experience with those?

For my use case, I would have preferred an ethernet port instead of HDMI. For now, I will be using an USB-C dongle that I have working with my iPad.

 

[hennot]

I love macOS. I've been using it as my primary OS for 10 years.

I am an IT professional. Part of my work involves configuring and fixing network equipment, like routers and switches which is commonly done via Ethernet cable, before WiFi is set up.

Another part of my work involves providing IT support which sometimes means getting files from a computer to some medium. Sometimes the computers don't have USB3 and I use Ethernet to copy the files the fastest way possible.

Being an IT professional with a 'pro' laptop but having to resort to dongles to do my job is the worst. Every time when I am doing network stuff and my Macbook Pro is on some makeshift surface or in my arms (in a server room) and the thick and heavy network cable with the dongle tears USB-C plug downwards (or upwards if the port is high above and the cable is short), I am hoping the tearing does not eventually break the port or the plug one day.

Since the Ethernet jack was removed, I have always missed it in those situations. Every time I have to connect an Ethernet cable I feel frustrated having to walk to my computer bag to fetch and connect the the damn dongle.

Now that Apple moved to M1 which does not require so massive cooling and the battery does not have to be so big either AND the case is made bulkier just like in the old days, it cannot be that there is not enough room for a half size Ethernet jack like many ultra portables have. And the talk about taking too many watts is also questionable given that new Macbooks last forever.

Someone wrote that nobody writes about this to forums. I never thought it would help. But there, now I've done it!

 

[MK500]

I agree with everyone that an Ethernet port would have been great. I would have traded the SD card slot for it; but I think we are in the minority. I tend to use my 14” on Ethernet 90% of the time.

EDIT: Ignore my claims about speed of 8153 chipset. Current speed on M1 under 12.2.1 is only about 70% of line speed. It averages 650 to 700Mbps.

It has been about a year since I did my testing, and the particular dongle I like best is no longer sold. So I purchased a new 8153 dongle from CableCreation with the hope of recommending/linking to it. Unfortunately when re-testing with the old and new dongles I found the performance shortfall. Note that full performance is still there when using 8153 under iOS 15.3.1; Apple only seems to have screwed up the macOS driver (gotta wonder how they are using a different driver; when it all should be the same underneath).

Anyway; sorry for leading you astray.

After much testing; my recommendation is to buy a USB dongle with the RTL8153 chipset. Preferably aluminum for cooling. You can search for RTL8153 on Amazon to find one. If you get one with an regular USB (not USB C) connector, you can also use it on almost any iOS device by pairing it with Apple’s USB “camera kit” adapter. You can then connect it to your dock or a USB-C adapter (cheap and small) when using it with your MBP.

- It will work without drivers on almost any Mac (even quite old ones)
- It can achieve 1Gbps full bandwidth (many dongles do not)
- It will work on almost any iOS device (shows up immediately in settings)

If you connect to a modern iOS device; make sure to use the newer USB3 version of the Apple “camera kit”, and not a third party adapter. With this setup I can get full 1Gbps bandwidth from even my 10.5” iPad Pro.

Of course if you don’t need iOS support (or only have newer iPad with USB-C), you can just get a RTL8153 adapter with USB-C.

Luckily these adapters are quite cheap as well.

 

[jdb8167]

For me, I find that having Ethernet on my dock is more useful since I’m unlikely to need Ethernet while away from my desk. With the dock I get single cable connection to everything.

Which is great except my Ethernet adapter seems to be very slow. It is slower than my WiFi 6 connection. I didn’t notice before I got the WiFi 6 router. I’m going to have to invest in a new adapter I think. More info in this thread.

 

[harshw]

What do you think about this adapter?

Solo10G (10GBASE-T 10Gb Ethernet Thunderbolt Adapter) - SONNETTECH

10GbE Thunderbolt adapter with NBASE-T support. Connects through a RJ45 10GbE port to 10GBASE-T 10GbE networks. For Thunderbolt 4 and 3 computers.

www.sonnettech.com

It's obviously very big, but apart from that, it seems to work fine. There are others alternatives like the ones from OWC or Calldigit. Anyone has experience with those?

For my use case, I would have preferred an ethernet port instead of HDMI. For now, I will be using an USB-C dongle that I have working with my iPad.

Both the OWC and Sonnet adapters use the Aquantia chips and get quite hot when doing 10GbE. They used to retail for $149 with promos taking the price down to $119 but now with the chip shortage, it is difficult to find them for less than $200 ~ $250

I use the OWC model, they are the same - and both have upgradeable firmware - you really should upgrade the firmware because it fixes a few issues. The adapters also do 2.5GbE and 5 GbE.

It would be nice to have a TB3 dock that has 10Gbase-T or then an Apple branded adapter/dock with 10 GbE. Even if one does not do 10GbE, Intel has 2.5 GbE adapters, loads of consumer switches support 2.5 GbE and many 802.11ax APs have a 2.5GbE port - so faster networking is definitely there to stay. I wish Apple would do 2.5GbE/5GbE adapters for this reason ...

 

[Wolf1701]

I agree with everyone that an Ethernet port would have been great. I would have traded the SD card slot for it; but I think we are in the minority. I tend to use my 14” on Ethernet 90% of the time.

After much testing; my recommendation is to buy a USB dongle with the RTL8153 chipset. Preferably aluminum for cooling. You can search for RTL8153 on Amazon to find one. If you get one with an regular USB (not USB C) connector, you can also use it on almost any iOS device by pairing it with Apple’s USB “camera kit” adapter. You can then connect it to your dock or a USB-C adapter (cheap and small) when using it with your MBP.

- It will work without drivers on almost any Mac (even quite old ones)
- It can achieve 1Gbps full bandwidth (many dongles do not)
- It will work on almost any iOS device (shows up immediately in settings)

If you connect to a modern iOS device; make sure to use the newer USB3 version of the Apple “camera kit”, and not a third party adapter. With this setup I can get full 1Gbps bandwidth from even my 10.5” iPad Pro.

Of course if you don’t need iOS support (or only have newer iPad with USB-C), you can just get a RTL8153 adapter with USB-C.

Luckily these adapters are quite cheap as well.

Post in thread 'MacBook Air: USB-C Ethernet unreliable'
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-air-usb-c-ethernet-unreliable.2287743/post-29675395

 

[MK500]

Post in thread 'MacBook Air: USB-C Ethernet unreliable'
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-air-usb-c-ethernet-unreliable.2287743/post-29675395

Interesting. Note that the post says the 8153 chip uses more CPU than desirable, not that 8153 ethernet is unreliable. It's actually extremely reliable (unless the vendor built their dongle poorly).

I do see CPU load when pulling full line speed. Maybe even a full core being used at max throughput. But in day-to-day use I have not noticed an issue with this. Network traffic is usually bursty; so you aren't fully loading the network connection often.

By the way; this is a normal issue with ethernet. I build a lot of servers, and the main difference between a consumer class ethernet chipset and server class is CPU offloading. But ethernet adapters that offload from the CPU tend to be much more expensive. I would hope something like the Sonnet would do this; but it's unlikely you will find CPU offloading in a < $50 dongle.

I stand by my testing. The 8153 is about the best right now. I also did some testing with 2.5Gbps and faster dongles, but had terrible experiences. I didn't work up to the high end Sonnet level devices. I think if you really need faster than 1Gbps it would be best to use one of these high-end well supported devices, as driver issues can become a real nightmare.

Otherwise it's best to use something Apple drivers support; either directly or through a generic kext.

 

[Wolf1701]

Interesting. Note that the post says the 8153 chip uses more CPU than desirable, not that 8153 ethernet is unreliable. It's actually extremely reliable (unless the vendor built their dongle poorly).

Agreed, I have three 8153, they are reliable (even if the speed seems to be a bit incostant but improving with 12.2, MBAir M1). The CPU load is unfortunate, seems that at least the old intel versions could use a realtek driver for this... https://gist.github.com/MadLittleMods/3005bb13f7e7178e1eaa9f054cc547b0

 

[satcomer]

Both the OWC and Sonnet adapters use the Aquantia chips and get quite hot when doing 10GbE. They used to retail for $149 with promos taking the price down to $119 but now with the chip shortage, it is difficult to find them for less than $200 ~ $250

I use the OWC model, they are the same - and both have upgradeable firmware - you really should upgrade the firmware because it fixes a few issues. The adapters also do 2.5GbE and 5 GbE.

It would be nice to have a TB3 dock that has 10Gbase-T or then an Apple branded adapter/dock with 10 GbE. Even if one does not do 10GbE, Intel has 2.5 GbE adapters, loads of consumer switches support 2.5 GbE and many 802.11ax APs have a 2.5GbE port - so faster networking is definitely there to stay. I wish Apple would do 2.5GbE/5GbE adapters for this reason ...

Do you use the OWC Thunderbolt Pro Dock?

 

[harshw]

Do you use the OWC Thunderbolt Pro Dock?

No I use the Caldigit TS3 along with this:OWC 10 GBE

The OWC TB Pro dock has a fan that operates continuously although you can switch it off for a short period. And no USB-C - so didn’t want to use, BUT it has the same 10gbe NIC as the others ie AQC-107

 

[jdb8167]

For me, I find that having Ethernet on my dock is more useful since I’m unlikely to need Ethernet while away from my desk. With the dock I get single cable connection to everything.

Which is great except my Ethernet adapter seems to be very slow. It is slower than my WiFi 6 connection. I didn’t notice before I got the WiFi 6 router. I’m going to have to invest in a new adapter I think. More info in this thread.

Interesting. On Monterey, I just turned off IPV4 in the Network panel of System Preferences. At least for the T-Mobile WiFi 6 hotspot this fixed my performance problems. Something about this T-Mobile 5G/WiFi 6 router doesn't seem to like IPV4. Since I think T-Mobile is 100% IPV6 it shouldn't make any difference.

Oddly though my Mac Pro on Big Sur using one of it's built-in Ethernet ports is working normally on IPV4. No idea what is going on but I don't really care since I'm getting full-speed on my M1 MacBook Air Ethernet adapter again.

 

[tmoerel]

On 5Ghz Wifi networks, I get almost the same speeds as I would from being plugged in with ethernet, even when I'm a decent distance away from the router. If you're using ethernet, you're obviously going to be a short distance away from a router, switch, or mesh ap, so there's no real benefit for an ethernet port. If you have a garbage wifi router, then get a better one.

My 2.5Gbps connection to my NAS wants to disagree with you

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

My 2.5Gbps connection to my NAS wants to disagree with you

Just use a dongle or hub. Which is not a nuisance when your MBP is stationary on the desk.

 

[profcutter]

Just use a dongle or hub. Which is not a nuisance when your MBP is stationary on the desk.

I’m not sure how this comment is supposed to be useful. Different folks have different use cases, and when troubleshooting networks, it’s always preferable to use ethernet. Updating firmware or adjusting settings is a bad time to have a wifi glitch. That’s why folks want the connectors built in.