Like many others lately, I've been trying to get Virtual Desktop working over a wired ethernet connection on my Quest 3. After a full night of troubleshooting — guided by Claude AI since I have zero ADB experience — I want to share exactly where I got, what I found, and ask if anyone has solved what I couldn't.
My setup: Quest 3 → USB-C hub (RJ45) → Network switch → Router → same switch → PC Router: TP-Link Deco M5 mesh system Firmware: v2.3
Adapters tested so far (I already own all of these):
Hub 1 — Baseus 11-in-1 (unknown chipset) eth0 never appeared in ifconfig. Invisible to the Quest OS. Showed up on the Deco as "IEEE" with its own MAC — but that was just the hub's USB presence, not an active ethernet interface.
Hub 2 — UGREEN USB-C + RJ45 (ASIX chipset) eth0 appeared in ifconfig with driver cdc_ncm. The Deco recognized it as "ASIX Electronics Corporation" with its own MAC and IP. Internet worked briefly with WiFi still on — but the moment WiFi was disabled, the connection dropped completely and never recovered.
Hub 3 — USB-C to 2.5G Ethernet + PD 100W (on the way, chipset unconfirmed) Haven't tested yet. Hoping for the best but aware 2.5G adapters often use RTL8156 which reportedly doesn't work.
I'd rather not buy a fourth adapter if there's a workaround.
ADB investigation (I had no prior experience — Claude walked me through all of this):
- Enabled Developer Mode via Meta Horizon developer portal
- Connected via USB cable → authorized debugging → switched to ADB over WiFi so I could test with the hub connected simultaneously
setprop debug.usb.ethernet.enabled 1— ran without error but made no difference with ASIXsetprop persist.debug.usb.ethernet.enabled 1— Permission Denied- All routing table commands (
ip route add, etc.) — Permission Denied ifconfigconfirmed eth0 was UP with packets flowing but no inet addr (no IPv4 gateway)
The Deco DHCP situation: This added a lot of confusion. Some observations that might help others:
- The Quest appeared under multiple different names and MACs in the Deco app — "phone", "Android-2", "IEEE", "ASIX Electronics Corporation" — depending on which adapter was connected and whether WiFi was on
- Quest uses randomized MAC addresses per network by default — disabling this (Settings → WiFi → network → MAC Address → Use Device MAC) is essential before trying IP reservations
- Even after reserving IPs for both the WiFi MAC and the ethernet adapter MAC in the Deco, the adapters kept grabbing wrong IPs — the Deco seemed to ignore reservations intermittently
- When WiFi and ethernet were both active, both sometimes received the same IP, causing the Deco to drop one of the registrations
Root cause (as I understand it): The Quest routing table keeps the default gateway tied to wlan0. When WiFi is disabled, the gateway disappears. eth0 stays UP but has no route to the internet. Without root, there's no known way to force the route to eth0 — the Quest won't migrate it automatically, at least not with an ASIX adapter.
My questions for the community:
- Has anyone with v2.3 confirmed RTL8153 working with WiFi fully disabled and VD connecting cleanly?
- Is there any workaround for ASIX adapters without root?
- Has anyone found a way to modify the routing table without root — Shizuku, Tasker, VPN trick, anything?
- The 2.5G adapter arriving soon — worth testing or a known dead end?
- Are the recent VD connection issues others are reporting related to this gateway/routing problem, or something separate?
Happy to share full ADB output or ifconfig results if useful.