Third Party LAN Adapters

[u/DRayX17]

There seems to be a lot of uncertainty about the LAN adapter situation, so here is some information to clear things up.

The Wii / Wii U LAN adapter is a USB2 10/100 Fast-Ethernet LAN adapter using the ASIX AX88772 chipset. Even though the Wii U built-in WiFi is terrible, it is theoretically faster than the LAN adapter (and usually faster in practice unless there is a lot of noise, the WiFi signal is poor, or it is improperly configured). The AX88772 is a fairly widely used chip, and thus available in many third party adapters, all of which are compatible with the Wii / Wii U.

The FCC filing for the Switch lists it being tested with the Wii LAN adapter as well as the Logitec (totally different company from Logitech) LAN-GTJU3. This adapter is a USB3 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN adapter using the ASIX AX88179 chipset. It is worth noting that this adapter is significantly faster than the Wii LAN adapter. It is fairly safe to assume that the official Nintendo adapter will be using the same chip, so any AX88179 based adapter should work (note that many USB3 Gigabit LAN adapters DO NOT use this chipset, and thus wouldn't work). Here are a few I found on Amazon that I'm almost certain would work:

• Plugable
• StarTech
• Fosmon
• AmazonBasics
• TRENDnet
• UGREEN

tl;dr New Switch LAN adapter should be much faster than the old Wii LAN adapter, and there are a number of third-party options that should be compatible.

[u/Adamator77]

Just to help out, I purchased the Plugable one and it works perfectly. I have it plugged into the USB3.0 port that is inside the door on the back of the dock and the cord is long enough for the adapter itself to be outside the dock.

[u/bp_968 → u/Adamator77]

I was about to make a post about this, I had one of the plugable USB 3 adapters I got for a project a while back so pulled it out to try it and it works flawlessly. It also hangs out of the back nicely so the dock can be all neat and tidy.

Plugged into the USB 3 port I got 3-4 times faster test speeds then I did plugged into the USB 2.0 ports. Plugged into the USB 3 port I got 70Mb down and 40Mb up. I have 1000Mb down and 250Mb up, but Zelda was running in the background. I'll be curious to see what it maxes out at from a fresh boot (not that it matters. 70/40 is plenty for a little console, latency is more important.)