Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

jeffgeerling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 121 posts

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#81

Post by geerlingguy »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #48

> I can edit 4K video straight off my NAS over the network, Nothing against Jeff Geerling and I love his YouTube channel and I'm glad he's one of us HNer but this crop of circular "I make YouTube vids about big tx speeds and big NAS because I make vids hence I need big tx speeds and big NAS so I can speak about big tx speeds and big NAS because I make YouTube vids about big tx speeds and big NAS" videos is a bit tiri…

Jellyfin: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/tags/jellyfin/

LLMs: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/tags/llm/

Etc... (I don't do any crypto)

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#84

Post by rconti »

myelin wrote: post #70
rconti wrote: post #68

For 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've had a lot of luck with the Plugable 2.5G USB-C adapters, although on some ports they're incredibly unreliable -- I'm guessing maybe something about the power supply? On a CalDigit TS3 dock, I've had one working off the rear Thunderbolt socket for over a year, but it fails in minutes if plugged into the USB-C one. I've never had issues with a CalDigit Elements (TB4) hub. I've had success plugging them directly in…

Interesting! I'm using a TS3 dock and my entire use case is to bypass the 1GbE on the dock and get 2.5G to my work laptop. But once I started having issues I took both my laptops directly to my main switch to rule out house wiring issues, so I didn't spend much time dealing with the different ports on the TS3.

My logic was that I didn't want to spend $400+ on a TS4 for my WORK computer, just to get a faster ethernet for the lulz. I was happy to spend $25 for bragging rights.

Of course, now that I've spent that same $25-30 4 times, it's beginning to feel like less of a bargain.

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#86

Post by brcmthrowaway »

geerlingguy wrote: post #69
airspresso wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My default assumption (with no knowledge about this particular case) is that all gear in YouTube videos is sponsored. Too easy to get jealous of all the fancy setups. But I don't want to become a YouTuber so that settles that.

The Mac Studio in most of my videos is my own workstation, purchased a while back. The 4 Mac Studio cluster I tested with Exo and Thunderbolt RDMA was a loaner cluster from Apple. There's no universe in which I could justify buying that. I always mention any equipment that's provided / loaned / etc. and the nature of my relationships with vendors—I try to also keep this document updated for transparency's sake: https…

The tax deduction through LLC is a good one

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#87

Post by teaearlgraycold »

frollogaston wrote: post #29
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #3

It’s crazy that the Ethernet chips consume more power (presumably - because of the heat) than the processor in the computer. How is driving 25Gb/s such a hot task compared to driving multiple 40Gb/s Thunderbolt ports?

Maybe the NIC does a lot? In past experience, a whole Xeon CPU couldn't keep up with a 10gig NIC if it was sending/receiving min-size UDP packets. Even with Intel DPDK iirc.

I believe the CPU gets an interrupt per packet. It’s just not designed to be interrupted that often.

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#88

Post by walrus01 »

voxadam wrote: post #54
Neywiny wrote: post #45

I'm using the sonnet at work. Work paid for it. Yes it's more expensive. I have gotten over 25 gbps bidirectional, but not by much. Maybe 27. A big downside is that it only supports 15W upstream power which I didn't think to check, so since that laptop only has 2 usb-c ports for power input, it's a bit limiting. The upside, though, was that I plugged it in, got my throughput, and never had to worry ever again. Rememb…

>I'm using the sonnet at work. I initially read this as SONET [1] and was seriously questioning your technical choices. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_optical_networking

I've seen some very old cubicle setups that had two strands of 62.5/125 multimode (OM1) pulled to each desk for a FDDI connection. Very costly in its era.

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#89

Post by StillBored »

wmf wrote: post #53
ssl-3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A normal x16 PCIe slot has always been able to supply up to 75w since the beginning.

A normal non-GPU PCIe x4/x8 slot that you'd use for a NIC provides 25 W.

I might be hallucinating, but IIRC this is now dependent on PCIe revision. More recent revisions have removed the slot power limits line, and so it works out that in theory a x4 slot (or any other size) can have a 75W load. IIRC this is stated in the middle of a giant section on up/down plugging.

(but its also displayed in the pcie PowerLimit capabilities you can see with lspci)

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#90

Post by lmz »

olavgg wrote: post #22
dlcarrier wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is RDMA something worth looking into for connecting two random Linux computers? I've been extremely underwhelmed by the stability and performance of my NFS shares.

Yes, nfs with rdma will increase your performance significantly.

They also said something about stability, which I doubt would be improved by adding RDMA into the mix.
Post reply on HN