Would adding 10GB Ethernet (vs the base 1GB) provide longer future proofing to a new Mac mini M2 pro? or M3 pro?

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Hello. We understand the $100 price bump in the US for adding the 10GB ethernet option on a new Mac mini or any Apple Mac is high. To us who are considering replacing a 2018 i7 Mac mini, our decision is about future proofing.

$100 extra on a M2/M3 pro is manageable for our budget.

Our thinking is that internet service providers, in the next 3-5 years may be offering more that 1GB internet. And when they do, our understanding is that a 1GB ethernet card would throttled the faster service.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on the future proofing idea.
Cheers
Neil

PS If you have comments or can point us to M3 pro Mac mini updates, we are curious about if waiting a while longer for its arrival would be worth it.

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Yes, in the US some already do. EPB in Chattanooga Tennessee offers 2,500 Mbps for $98/month. And much higher for much more :grinning:. IMO if you think you need those speeds, and are willing to pay for it, I would get the faster card.

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I’d definitely pay for it since you want to future-proof. Your other networking equipment is probably going to 2.5gb over the next few years. 10gb would also let you have a fast interface to a NAS.

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Also, it’s really not an expensive upgrade. If you were buying a card for a PC, you’d pay $50-150. The expense of 10gb everywhere is why 2.5 is becoming the standard first.

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Without a doubt. I just went through this after not really paying attention. My internet company had been slowly increasing their speeds for years. Eventually I could get 1.2Gb service for the price I was already paying, so I upgraded. Two years later I got 2.5Gb fiber so I started looking at my devices. I was surprised to find out that most of my devices had 1Gb ports, including my router and my switch. I was paying for a service I wasn’t getting full use out of. So I replaced the router, switch, and cables. Luckily my Mac Studio already has 10Gb, but not everything I have supports faster speeds.

So yes, future proof yourself for when speeds in your area do increase, but also start looking at everything else on your network when you upgrade. Routers are still incredibly bad about this, once they start including faster ports, prices ramp up quickly. From my research, if you want more than one higher speed WAN and port, you have to get a WiFi 6e or 7 router.

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At my age (75) I wouldn’t bother. And if you expect to replace that Mac mini before you go greater than 1GB, don’t bother.

If I were younger I’d still have to consider that to get any use of it I’d need to replace virtually every Ethernet cable and device in the house. I already did that to go to 1GB (and decades ago did to go from 10 MB 10BASE2 to 100BASE-T). Consider any “slow” wires in the walls as well as switches and routers. It all needs to be replaced. I’ve still got a string of coax going through our house for the 10BASE2 that wasn’t worth pulling.

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2gig will be available in the majority of places that offer 1gig over the next couple years.

Wiring ease would depend on the design of your house or business. In my case it was a 20 minute pull. The fiber or optic modem and router will get updated as part of the new service if not already fast enough. Switches are a bit of a teeth-gritting expense though prices are coming down.

Age–fair point, but then, what’s $100 you can’t take with you? :slight_smile:

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With fiber, at least where I live, once they run it on your street they will do the install for free (The company who ran it is trying hard to establish a market here, so they are doing everything they can to get people signed up). I live in a condo and thought “no chance I will be able to get fiber here,” but I have it. Not sure how or when they did it, but it comes in through my master-bedroom’s walk-in closet, which is just about the worst place for it. Since I don’t have ethernet cables in the walls I basically had to run a wire from the closet to my office where the router is. And now I want everything wired for speed, so I have more cables running along the floor. :slight_smile:

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With regard to Internet speed that’s only half the equation here. Even someone with 1GB Broadband could justify upgrading to 10GB.

I personally will not buy a new Mac without 10g if it’s an option for a couple of reason.

  1. Apple NIC aren’t just 10g they are really ManyGig which means they support 1, 2.5, 5 and 10GB respectively.

  2. ManyGig NIC can run 2.5gbe on standard Cat5e and if your house has ethernet wiring it’s likely Cat5e or better. 10Gb can be run on Cat6 up to 55 meters.

So even with my 1gb Fiber not keeping up with my network I could very easily have an internal LAN operating at 2.5gbe and above and this is important to sending large files from one device to another.

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@nplanchon I use a Mac Mini with a 1Gb usb port. As my internet speed is 2Gb/s I’ve bought a USB C to Ethernet 2,5 G adapter. They are not expensive. For about €20 you can order one for example at Amazon.
Maybe this is something as a cheap intermediate solution?

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Chasing the highest specs on any hardware is fine if you have the budget or need for it or simply want it.

With networking, it is worthwhile to remember that there is a big difference between local network (in your home and the WAN network (public Internet).

For local network, as others mentioned, you will need to insure all your network gear is upgraded to 2.5 GBit or 10 GBit Ethernet wire and speeds if you want to benefit from higher speeds between devices within your home. (Currently, the only need I’ve seen is for huge capacity local drives backing up to a local NAS array).

For most software, data is read and written in smaller blocks, so the upgrade in raw speed to 2.5Gbit or 10 Gbit may not provide a significant improvement in actual app or processing speeds.

Public Internet servers do not provide bandwidth to downstream clients without limitation. Bandwidth costs money and higher throughput requires more servers and uses more resources.

Just because one has a higher speed ISP connection doesn’t mean that your DropBox, iCloud, Backblaze, NetFlix, YouTube, etc. use will be benefit from the full speed of that additional link.

Yes, you will get faster speed, but probably not as much as you think.

The biggest benefit of greater Internet speed for home Internet is supporting more users.

Although, for example, streaming a 4K movie takes around 15mbps to 20 mbps, or less, depending on the streaming service’s compression algorithms, if you have 5 or 10 people in your home all wanting to stream movies at the same time, a higher speed Internet connection will help.

Any individual stream won’t magically go from 20mbps to 100mbps or more, but you will be able to sustain higher overall throughput.

But this comes with a big caveat - consumer grade network gear - Routers, Switches, Wi-Fi, do not have the capacity to support high density traffic. Just because the Ethernet port on the router has been upgraded to 2.5G or 10G, doesn’t mean everything else in the data flow has the ability to actually sustain that level of performance.

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