Free ethernet software for mac

Although USB to Ethernet adaptors are cheap and plentiful, Mac OS X drivers are not.
USB-to-Ethernet offers you USB to Ethernet Adaptor Drivers.
There are two basic catagories of USB-To-Ethernet adaptors:
- USB 1.1 devices that use a Pegasus driver.
- USB 2.0 devices that use a AX8817x driver (or its successor, the AX88772).
Each disk image includes an installer for Panther or Tiger, and a "src" folder containing the corresponding xCode projects.
Installation
Download and mount the appropriate driver disk image listed above, run the corresponding installer for Panther or Tiger, and then restart your system as suggested. The Installer will ask you to authenticate so it can place the corresponding driver in "/System/Library/Extensions/" with the correct file permisions to load as a kernel extension.
Next, plug-in your Ethernet adaptor with a live Ethernet cable attached. When you open the Network Preferences panel, it should inform you that a new port has appeared and ask if you want to enable it. Enable the new port and apply your network settings. Thats it.
Each driver is pre-configured to recognize a handfull of common devices. If your device does not appear to be recognized by the driver, you might have to add it to the Info.plist file, which is located inside the USBPegasusEthernet.kext or USBAx8817x.kext directory. You can use the System Profiler or USBProber tool to find the corresponding Product ID and Vendor ID.
To uninstall the driver, make sure any USB adaptors are disconnected, and then drag the corresponding driver in /System/Library/Extensions/ USBPegaususEthernet.kext or USBAx8817x.kext to the trash. You may need to authenticate that you have administrator privileges.
USB 1.1 Performance
The Pegasus chipset provides a USB 1.1 compatible implementation which could be a concern for some users. USB 1.1 runs at 1.5 Mbps (low speed) or 12 Mbps (full speed). For best performance, its important to isolate any low speed devices on a separate bus. Mice and keyboards often run at low speed.
Using the Link Rate tool in IPNetMonitorX, I measured the link rate to another device on my LAN as 6 Mbps. The built-in Ethernet on my 12" PBG4 reported 44 Mpbs. When I measured the link rate to the next hop router through my cable modem, it reported 1 mbps. It didnt make any difference whether I used Ethernet built-in or the USB-To-Ethernet adaptor. Finally, I downloaded a 2.2 MB file to compare the throughput using the Monitor tool.
Both downloads took 5 seconds, but Ethernet built-in reached a peak rate of 589 KBps versus 579 kBps. Repeating the experiment several times produced similar results. Ethernet built-in might be 1-2% faster, but performance was clearly limited by the speed of my cable modem (Your Mileage May Vary).
USB 2.0 Performance
The AX8817x chip set provides a USB 2.0 compatible implementation which runs at up to 480 Mbps (high speed), so it should be possible to keep up with 100 Mbps fast ethernet as long as there are no other slower devices on the same bus. To test this I copied a 64.8 MB music file to my PBG4 laptop connected through a LinkSys USB200M Ethernet Adaptor (en3) and compared this to the same file transfer using Built-in Ethernet (en0).
Both transfers reached 10 MBps (80-90 Mbps) and took about 10 seconds. I repeated the test in the other direction.
While the USB-To-Ethernet adaptor was slightly slower, at 80 Mbps there was little noticeable difference. Files moved quickly from one system to another via 100 Mbps fast Ethernet. Copying the same file using AirPort wireless took 50-90 seconds.
Stability
While other USB-To-Ethernet drivers are reported to be buggy, I havent encountered any stability problems to date. The adaptor turns off when the computer goes to sleep and comes back on when the computer awakes. It does not support "Wake On LAN" at this time.
Wrap Up
This USB-To-Ethernet Adaptor combination could be an attractive solution for a Mac Mini, or old iBook used as an Internet gateway or server. Im particularly fond of using old laptops as servers since they are compact, quiet, use little energy, and include their own battery backup.

Apple Ethernet Update 2.0 is a reliable and useful live update module which improves AppleShare connections in high-traffic network environments.

The Apple Ethernet Update 2.0 consists of version 2.4.3 of the Apple Ethernet extension. When you use certain Mac OS 9 applications while connected to AppleShare volumes, disconnections can occur. You may see "TickleTimeout" disconnect messages in the Mac OS X Server 10 Apple File Service access log. The Apple Ethernet Extension 2.4.3 prevents these disconnections from occurring.

Apple Ethernet Driver 1.1.10 is developed to be an essential update which provides improved connection stability. This updater is recommended for all Xserve systems and PowerMac systems with the Apple PCI or PCI-X Ethernet card installed.

Requirements:
NetMinder Ethernet 5.0.x.

Enhancements:
Version 5.0.2 fixes the following:

• support for decode of mDNS (Rendezvous) protocol
• optimization of the four Analysis windows to rapidly sort and display the top 100 addresses for traffic analysis purposes
• fixes to AppleShare/IP decodes

Requirements:
Kingston (KNE100TX) ethernet card.

Enhancements:
Version 3.3 is now MacOS 9 compatible.

Requirements:
Fast EtherTX-10/100 PCI Plus Card

Granet (Graph networking) is a simple, no-cost utility that graphs the throughput of each active network interface on your computer. It works with most any network interface recognized by the OS (including Ethernet, Airport, and PPP).

Each interface is displayed in its own window which can be moved and re-sized from small to large. Each window scales independently so the graph is drawn appropriately throughout the throughput range.

GetMacAddress is a small palette to show the ethernet MacAddress of your Macintosh. Even if this information can be retrieved with Apple System Profiler or by System Preferences/Network, you can use this free utility for quick locate and copy your MacAddress.

MacAddress means Media Access Control Address. It is the part of the data-link layer of a network protocol that defines how devices should share media to exchange messages with each other (802.11 or Ethernet frames, for example).

Each device on a LAN needs to have a unique address (just like every globally-addressable device on the Internet has to have a unique IP address) to know where to send frames.