Dual NIC via USB? Recommendations?

[MrSurly]

I'm running a Lenovo M700 TINY and I want to have dual NIC capability. This little pancake PC does not have the physical room for adding such niceties inside; I can only think of using a USB-based adapter but if there are reasons not to, or other ways to accomplish this, let me know.
Also if you can recommend a particular adapter...

 

[DsineR]

I have been using this for over a year, with a Dell OptiPlex MFF. Works great, zero problems. There are probably more current versions today.
Recommend USB3.0 adapter with a current chipset.

 

[MrSurly]

I have been using this for over a year, with a Dell OptiPlex MFF. Works great, zero problems. There are probably more current versions today.
Recommend USB3.0 adapter with a current chipset.

Does it being on USB create any issues? Are you able to set it up just as you would any ethernet card? Keeps its settings, shows up after reboot without problems? Has it caused any slowing or buffering difficulty?

 

[DsineR]

No issues, works as advertised. Shows up as a Network Adapter, configurable same as any network adapter.
No latency or buffering, reboots does not affect settings.
Screen grab below shown network connections, 'CAM LAN' is the USB adapter.

 

[MrSurly]

Thanks for that. It looks like this is the direction I need to go.

 

[TheGooginator]

Wow I was just going to research the same topic as I just purchased a HP EliteDesk 800 G1 USDT Desktop i7-4790S 3.2GHz 8GB 256GB SSD and after I bought it found out it doesn't have room for expansion PCI slots I am glad we are able to purchase a USB dongle to achieve the dual NIC setup that I am going to end up doing.

 

[IAmATeaf]

Just my personal experience but avoid the usb lan adapters with a Realtek chip. I had no end of problems using Realtek chipped adapters with a few laptops at work. The damn thing would work and then randomly just go completely offline, nothing but an unplug/replug would fix it.

Tried a few different makes and then tried an Amazon basic version and that worked so then checked and the common element was that all the ones that didn’t work were all Realtek chipsets.

This could be just a compatibility problem, all the laptops we were using were Dell but differing models and they all suffered in the same way with the Realtek chipset adapters.

 

[reflection]

I have been using this for over a year, with a Dell OptiPlex MFF. Works great, zero problems. There are probably more current versions today.
Recommend USB3.0 adapter with a current chipset.

The ASIX AX88179 chipset (used by Dlink and Lenovo among others) is proven and I can also validate that they work fine. I have three of the Startech USB 3.0 NICs, which are based on the same ASIX AX88179 chipset as these.

Other popular chipsets are Realtek RTL8152/RTL8153 (used by TP-link, Cisco, Lenovo, Nvidia, and others) and Aquantia AQC111U (used by Trendnet) and ASIX ASIX88178a (USB 2.0).

If you stray from these chipsets, good luck getting the right drivers.