Upgrade Synology and Qnap NAS with 2.5 or 5 Gbps ethernet ⌚️ 🖥 📱 mac&egg (2024)

If you have a Synology or Qnap NAS and want to upgrade to a faster network connection, you can do so with relatively little effort and an external USB adapter.

2.5 or 5 GBit/s Ethernet for Qnap NAS retrofit

The easiest way to upgrade is for Qnap NAS models. Here you benefit from the fact that Qnap not only manufactures the NAS itself but also a 5 GBit/s USB network adapter, the QNA-UC5G1T. This is then of course almost necessarily compatible, because the drivers are already included in the operating system QTS for the NAS systems. Here it should be sufficient to simply connect the adapter. Prerequisite is QTS at least in version 4.3.6. Excluded NAS models are: TS-131, TS-231, TS-431, TS-431U, TS-128A, TS-228A. More details can be found here.

Before you buy, check this list to make sure that Qnap supports your model. But if you have a relatively powerful model with only 1 Gigabit port, you can expect that the Ethernet connection will be much faster with the Qnap USB adapter.

Refitting 2.5 GBit/s Ethernet for Synology NAS

Synology does not ship devices with 2.5 or 5 Gbps network connectivity. If, that it is directly 10 Gbit and that also only with the large models. That’s a shame, because even the smaller ones are fast enough and good for a better network speed.

However, you have to install a small piece of software and it’s not guaranteed that it always works. But the chances are quite good. Also important: currently the 6 version of the DSM operating system is supported, with the upcoming 7 version still being worked on for compatibility. The Japanese developer bb-qq kindly provides his driver for the Synologys on GitHub.

Listed as working so far are:

• DS918+ (confirmed working)
• DS620slim
• DS1019+
• DS718+
• DS418play
• DS218+

The important thing is that you first check a list at Synology to determine which chip architecture your model is based on. Then you can download the appropriate variant on the r8152 download page of bb-qq (so called because the Ethernet adapters are based on the Realtek chipset 8152). You can also find installation instructions directly at Synology. In summary:

1. Determine chipset
2. Download driver
3. Install

After that, the network adapter should be available to the system and you have just about tripled the transmission speed of your system for little money. Suitable switches for the expansion of your network can be found here.

The following 2.5 Ethernet USB adapters are suitable for the Synology upgrade project:

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