Jeff, I’m curious whether you really would have needed the $1,000 version of the Sonnet TB5 PCIe chassis. Would this $400 one have sufficed? https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1932655-REG/sonnet_ec...
Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
71–80 of 121 posts
Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
#72How does Jeff Geerling afford so many Mac Studios?
In addition to Jeff's comments in this thread, I am guessing all of his purchased gear is capital expense for an LLC he runs for his youtube channel. That makes it deductible from personal tax.
(again, all guesses, but a common pattern in the US)
Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, raw RDMA is one thing, making sure other protocols can use it is another... hopefully Apple gets there, but right now SMB with RDMA is probably a tiny, tiny niche. I do wonder what Apple's custom-built servers are running for networking. I wish they still made Mac Pro-level chassis specifically for better IO. Thunderbolt 5 is nice, but far inferior to a PCIe x16 slot (which can hit 400 Gbps networking) nowadays…
I'd suspect that (from Apple's perspective) any form of file sharing (other than iCloud) is now considered 'extremely niche.' If they were focused on the needs of the kind of person who moves enough terabytes of files around to need this kind of speed, we'd see them still making either computers with slots, or first-party 25Gbps networking. I'm not really trying to criticize them for it -- Tim Cook's bean counters cl…
Might their professionals market segment (designers, video editors, 3d artists, and so on) still be using thunderbolt and LAN storage? This was the case ~7 years ago when I worked adjacent to these sorts of users. Video files are huge and expensive in time and money to transit with cloud storage providers.
Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
#74Jeff, I’m curious whether you really would have needed the $1,000 version of the Sonnet TB5 PCIe chassis. Would this $400 one have sufficed? https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1932655-REG/sonnet_ec...
$400 is for the empty enclosure and $1,000 is for the enclosure with a NIC in it. Obviously it's still a ripoff because a 25G NIC does not cost $600.
Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
#75What are typical use cases for needing 25Gbps? Author talks about 4k video, but AI tells me that for "4K production mastering (ProRes 422 HQ, 4:2:2, 10-bit)" the rate is under 2Gbps. I'm not saying it's not needed, - just curious.
Running local LLMs split across machines. Pretty sure the author has some other posts about doing that. Edit: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/15-tb-vram-on-mac-stu...
correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't a Thunderbolt 5 cable $79 from Apple[1] work better for that? It gets 80 Gbps and doesn't need any extra equipment.
[1] https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mdw94am/a/thunderbolt-5-u...
Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
#76For us Plugable 2.5G USB-C to ethernet adapter (bought November 2025), SABRENT USB C to 2.5Gbps ethernet adapter (bought October 2024), UGREEN USB C 2.5G ethernet adapter (also October 2024). In my experience they immediately fall on their face in a speedtest and drop to a couple hundred Mbps, experience packet loss, etc. This is testing across a few modern Apple Silicon Macs. I now have a WavLink WL-NWU341G 5Gbps do…
I have the SABRENT USB-C to 2.5Gbps adapter as well (also bought late 2024) and can echo this sentiment. I had it connected to a M3 Pro MacBook Pro and could never get anywhere close to 2.5Gbps from it. I never found other complaints at the time either and was starting to blame poor wiring in my walls until I replaced it with Ubiquiti's 5GbE adapter (which I believe uses a Marvell controller) and that has been rock solid for me.
Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
#77For us Plugable 2.5G USB-C to ethernet adapter (bought November 2025), SABRENT USB C to 2.5Gbps ethernet adapter (bought October 2024), UGREEN USB C 2.5G ethernet adapter (also October 2024). In my experience they immediately fall on their face in a speedtest and drop to a couple hundred Mbps, experience packet loss, etc. This is testing across a few modern Apple Silicon Macs. I now have a WavLink WL-NWU341G 5Gbps do…
> do not buy a USB-C RealTek RTL8156-equipped multi-gig ethernet dongle to use with your Mac.
Buying a Mac with built in 10gbe is so nice compared to dongle hell.
But it’s not 25gbe
Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd suspect that (from Apple's perspective) any form of file sharing (other than iCloud) is now considered 'extremely niche.' If they were focused on the needs of the kind of person who moves enough terabytes of files around to need this kind of speed, we'd see them still making either computers with slots, or first-party 25Gbps networking. I'm not really trying to criticize them for it -- Tim Cook's bean counters cl…
Might their professionals market segment (designers, video editors, 3d artists, and so on) still be using thunderbolt and LAN storage? This was the case ~7 years ago when I worked adjacent to these sorts of users. Video files are huge and expensive in time and money to transit with cloud storage providers.
I do 8k video editing on a Mac Studio. Files are often multiple TB (raw camera capture which I have to encode to ProRes). Moving this kind of bandwidth is absolutely what I have to do and Apples’ bad networking is a blocker I’ve discovered.
Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
#79Jeff, I’m curious whether you really would have needed the $1,000 version of the Sonnet TB5 PCIe chassis. Would this $400 one have sufficed? https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1932655-REG/sonnet_ec...
$400 is for the empty enclosure and $1,000 is for the enclosure with a NIC in it. Obviously it's still a ripoff because a 25G NIC does not cost $600.
Yeah the best option for cost is to buy one of the many TB4 to PCIe adapters on the market now (I've tried two), that are less than $100. They require external PSU power though, and they don't look nearly as nice on a desk.
Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd suspect that (from Apple's perspective) any form of file sharing (other than iCloud) is now considered 'extremely niche.' If they were focused on the needs of the kind of person who moves enough terabytes of files around to need this kind of speed, we'd see them still making either computers with slots, or first-party 25Gbps networking. I'm not really trying to criticize them for it -- Tim Cook's bean counters cl…
Might their professionals market segment (designers, video editors, 3d artists, and so on) still be using thunderbolt and LAN storage? This was the case ~7 years ago when I worked adjacent to these sorts of users. Video files are huge and expensive in time and money to transit with cloud storage providers.
Apple used to even sell Xserve RAID and SAN software specifically to cater to the higher end users who needed fast networked storage (research, broadcast, media).
They kinda hit a standstill on the networking side as they moved to the trash can Mac, and I think that had killed momentum towards any high speed IO besides the Thunderbolt ports moving forward.
I was hopeful they'd keep the Mac Pro going into the M-series era but after one version... it's gone.