I was afraid of that. Figures sigh
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I’m not afraid 
Full compatibility of expansion cards ties well into reuseability!
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Out of curiosity, why not use replacement parts for devices that had these fancy foldable connectors, like FUJ:CA52303-3751 from an 2013 era Fujitsu laptop?
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Doesn’t make sense to me. The only advantage of the ethernet expansion card is that you can use standard cables. Instead of buying a mini rj45 to full-size ethernet adapter, you could simply buy a USB-C to ethernet adapter/cable and you wouldn’t need any special expansion card.
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i think you wouldn’t be buying an adapter for mini rj45 to rj45, but a rj45 to mini rj45 cable. it seems the biggest issue is always going to be the size of the rj45 jacks, and if you are going to use a usb-c to rj45 cable (i dont know if they even exist because its not just a passive convert) might at well just use these mini jacks that can handle up to 10Gb… it seems a worthy challenge to get 10Gb to thunderbolt expansion card in a frame work… but yeah IDK either, just trying to be helpful with ideas for a solution instead of finding ways it doesnt work…
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That’s still just a dongle. We want to avoid dongles, why we get a Framework.
Even if you get a low profile ethernet expansion card, you will still need an ethernet cable. This one cable solves the issue (for me at least).
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Same argument I have with making a serial interface expansion card. You may as well use a dongle, then when you don’t need that connection you have a USB port available without fiddling with expansion cards.
Does it properly handle sustained 1GBit/auto-negotiation/auto-crossover like it should though? The sustained (e.g. not overheating) is the one I’d be most worried about.
I’d say the only downside to this is if you’re expecting to hook an existing cable to your laptop you’d need to swap the cable. That and if you need different cable lengths at different locations. I’ve got a box full of different length ethernet cables, but I’d still have to buy one of these. 
I like the idea of this and if I didn’t use wireless all the time this is a good option I’d consider. I’d rather a single cable than a dongle to an ethernet cable. This isn’t much different than a USB-C expansion card to this cable, vs an ethernet expansion card to an ethernet cable.
Although realistically if I’m using ethernet I’ll probably have some sort of dock or a very temporary setup.
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Yeah, you’d need to use a coupler shudder if you need a ethernet cable of any real length.
Workable, sure.
In most use cases (at least for me), the ethernet cable is already at the desk or location I want to jack in. So having a dongle-cable combo is even worse than even having an external dongle because now I have to go down and find the source connection so I can plug in this dongle-cable. Which more often than not is behind a desk or furniture with spiderwebs and all kinds of nasty dust.
Not to mention you are now carrying around a long cable in your bag instead of just a 1 inch expansion card.
I configured my FW16 preorder with the ethernet expansion card. I don’t remember knowing it was going to be so big. I would like the option of having a low profile ethernet expansion card. Until one is released, this cable will be my solution.
Whatever works for you, but we’re just stating/refuting that it’s a good general purpose “low profile” so to speak, replacement for the ethernet card.
And yeah, I myself hadn’t looked too closely at first, and realized not long ago that it was relatively larger sticking out of the card on the side. shrug It’s fine for me.
for me, I had seen it was a little big, but most cases I am either running on wifi, or via ethernet into a dock (plan at least). the times when I’m wanting ethernet direct out of the laptop (like to do device setup/debugging and similar) having it stick out a little bit won’t be an issue.
but YMMV
And to add, even with the ethernet card being a bit larger than a normal expansion card, it is still smaller than a dongle OR that usb-ethernet cable, which will easily strain a usb-c port with that fat dongle part at the connector.
I honestly got the ethernet expansion card because it was 2.5Gb and will be much faster than the usual 1Gb connections when connecting to my home 10Gbe/2.5Gbe lan. It is used when the laptop is at my desk. Most other times my laptop will be wireless and it will be removed and in a case in my bag just in case it is needed.
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If you’ve got the card anyway, you already own a dongle! If you don’t like it sticking out as an expansion card, you can use it as a dongle: just stick it in a USB-C expansion card if you need it. It will use up less space than a cable in your bag (provided you use it at a spot that is providing the cable already)
This is amazing, and honestly, I think eventually the whole industry will eventually do away with multiple connectors and use something universal like usbc… much like how we used to have firewire and usb mini (not micro), serial, parallel, and whatever multitude of connections and protocols that have gone through iteration after iteration much like evolution to find the correct shape that outlives the competition…
This usbc solution is by far the best, cables tend to stay put and most use them in very defined places, such as office and home… so replace those cables with the rj45 to usbc and then either carry the rj45 framework card or carry an extra rj45 to usbc cable… with wifi6e and 7 coming soon, the average consumer doesn’t need or even use the full bandwidth of even a 1Gb rj45 anyway and wifi is closing the gap if not exceeding a 1gig anyway…
For those on a 10gb network, a rj45 to usbc is fitting or more appropriate thing to look into would really be a fiber network port…