Adding USB 2,5Gbe ethernet adapter to RB5009UG

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hello,
I am upgrading my home network setup which is driven currently by Hex S to “above 1Gig” WAN connection. My ISP supports RB5009UG and provides appropiate SFP module which leaves me with one 2,5Gbit port on my router.

I have two devices on which I would like to have 2,5Gbit connectivity (PC+NAS) and I wonder if it would be possible to use 2,5Gbit USB LAN adapter? USB3.0 port should provide suffice bandwith, but the question remains about particular card support. Did someone tested such setup? Are there some cards that are known to be working?

Already existing materials are rather outdated, going as far as ROS6 and mentioning only 100/1G adapters. I would rather want to avoid bonding two or more 1G LAN connections.

2

I bought Chateau Pro AX not realizing it has no 2.5Gb port (what a mistake, I didn’t even think that it is possible for wifi6 router). So I have the same question.

3

Or put a 2.5Gb / 10Gb switch in the mix ?

Even with bonding you will never saturate 2 links if only 1 stream is passing.

4

How does it help? There will be still only 1Gb ports on Chateau.
Currently I’m bonding (wasting) 3x 2.5Gb ports on CRS310-8G+2S+IN to 3x 1Gb on Chateau just to get 2.4Gbps by iperf :smiley:

USB 2.5Gb eth is the only option to use Chateau’s wifi6 potential.

5

Apologies, my response was directed to OP with RB5009.

6

I tried this one. No ethernet created.
Snímek obrazovky 2024-12-21 123719.png

7

I don’t believe routeros will allow you to add usb/ether adaptors.

As said. You need a switch that supports vlan and then trunk from switch to your 5009.

It’s not perfect but would work.

8

I have few 1Gbps Realteks which are simply working and new ethernet interface is added. All what should be needed is to add 2.5Gbps Realtek FW to .npk. If there is recent enough kernel used by mikrotik indeed.

9

7.16 recently added support for RTL8156, but for now only for x86.

10

I think it’s better, expensive yes, but more powerfull to add a crs310 connected by sfp+ between rb/crs

11

are you sure for this ? in changelog no mention to this limitation

12

*) x86 > - added RTL8156 driver support;

13

ohh. noted !

not so good… why only X86 support ?

14

maybe for driver reason and because, it’s an appliance, a commercial product with it’s specs and a limited usb port usage ; this allow mkt hardware/software to be stable and controller

x86 is more open but maybe more unstable due to lot of external factor independant of mkt team.

15

If anyone was still wanting an answer to this.
I have an RB5009. I had the same issue where I could not find a supported USB Ethernet adapter, usually either not turning up in the interface list, or not able to negotiate a link. It was solved easily, as I found “extra-nic-7.19.1-arm64.npk” extra drivers in the all packages directory of latest RouterOS. All ok and tested well. Usually this is for x86 hardware needing additional NIC support. However, it also worked on RB5001 (arm64). In this case a AX88179 USB Ethernet chip. Likely work for many more.

Cheers

16

I think it’s not the RB5009 who doesn’t support USB network devices, but the OS. Instead of x86 where compilated drivers are provided by kernel/manufacturer, here, we’re not on a standard platform (ok its arm64) maybe the driver don’t exist.

And on x86, mikrotik don’t provide the hardware, so they can accept multiples hardwares/devs… in case of appliance, it’s different and normal than mikrotik to not permit anything.

17

As above. Have now tested it with ARM64 MIPSBE and MIPS. So I think this is resolved on newer ros7

18

It’s just a a different CPU architecture. In Linux, drivers are (mostly) the same across architectures. RouterOS x86 and ARM64 CHR are both available to be installed on generic hardware (you can buy ARM64 PC’s or make your own if you want).