Add Four Ethernet Ports to the Raspberry Pi 5
Waveshare’s new PCIe board adds four 1GbE or 2.5GbE ports to the Raspberry Pi 5. It’s a compact, driver-free solution for homelab projects.
Is the Raspberry Pi 5’s single Ethernet port just not cutting it for your latest project idea? You could plug that Ethernet port into a switch and call it good, but that is not going to work if you need to keep your device small or conserve power. Fortunately, there is now another option. Waveshare has released the PCIe To 4-Ch Gigabit/2.5G ETH Board. It adds an additional four 1GbE or 2.5GbE ports to your Pi.
The Raspberry Pi 5 installs on top of the expansion board and is connected to it via the 16-pin PCIe interface. This connection also provides the expansion board with power, so there is no additional wiring required. The software side is just as simple—the board supports Raspberry Pi OS right out of the box, so no drivers need to be installed on the Pi.
While convenient, this expansion board is not about performance. The PCIe Gen2 x1 interface on the Pi has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 5.0 GT/s, which falls short of what four maxed-out 2.5GbE ports are capable of. However, using PCIe Gen3 x1, which is not officially supported by Raspberry Pi, would get you closer with 8 GT/s of bandwidth.
In any case, the PCIe To 4-Ch Gigabit/2.5G ETH Board is a very simple way to add lots of Ethernet ports for your homelab, test equipment, or exotic Raspberry Pi projects. The board currently sells for $40 to $50, depending on whether you need the 1GbE or 2.5GbE version.