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Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#101

Post by fragmede »

SlavikCA wrote: post #10

What 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.

ProRes is a compressed and encoded format. In order to become ProRes, it needs to be uncompressed and decoded at some point. uncompressed and unencoded is easier to work with on the rendering side, but much heavier on the data side. Ask your AI about the DPX file format.

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#102

Post by simoncion »

monster_truck wrote: post #61
randusername wrote: post #50

Can't you just put a real PCIe NIC in an eGPU enclosure with a fan? I bet you can solve this problem for like $150 and two craigslist transactions.

Absolutely not. It's another layer of throughput/compatability bingo on top of the already often quite annoying SFP bingo. If you are unfamiliar, the reality of the situation is quite bad. Slight hardware revisions of adapters/switches, which if you are lucky can be differentiated by manufacture date or serial number sequence, will not recognize known good modules, and if they do you then have to actually test if the…

Perhaps the situation with 25gbit modules is way worse than 10gbit, but I have twelve 10gbit 10GTek fiber modules and haven't had a problem with them. Though, perhaps this would be a lottery that I'd inevitably lose if I were populating a great many TOR switches and associated server NICs?

It also sounds like you're not saying that OP cannot "...just put a real PCIe NIC in an eGPU enclosure with a fan", but rather that regardless of where that NIC is situated, it's your experience that SFP quality is poor. Do I correctly understand what you're saying?

Edit: FWIW, I've had no problems with the ~two foot PCI-E riser cable that connects my graphics card to my motherboard. [0] I expect this OCuLink thing [1] will work fine, too.

[0] Taking up several PCI-E slots just for a damn graphics card is really dumb. IMO, mid-grade and better cases should have off-mobo mount points for oversized devices and offer riser cables to connect said devices to the installed motherboard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#OCULINK>

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#103

Post by Neywiny »

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #98
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…

Asking out of curiosity because I always wanted but never needed such speeds, could you elaborate on what you do and how does this speed help you? And I presume there’s a reason you’re not able to connect directly to the drives etc. with thunderbolt.

I'm not connecting to drives. What I'm connecting to has that speed of interface. And I think that's all I can say about that.

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#104

Post by kalleboo »

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…

YMMV - I have three RTL8156 2.5G dongles - one in my Synology NAS, and two in different spots where I usually sit down in a chair and plug in my M1 Pro or iPhone to charge (on USB-C charger hubs) and have never had any issues where they drop out from throughput - at once point I had it running full bore overnight. They're from Cable Matters (2025) and Planex (2024). The only issues I have is sometimes they just don't show up when I connect and I have to disconnect and reconnect. That could also just be an issue with USB-C hubs.

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#105

Post by kalleboo »

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…

The CalDigit TS3 dock has two different USB 3 controllers inside of it, each driving half the ports. One from Fresco Logic and one from ASMedia. I can't recall which one right now but one of them is unstable crap and the other one is better. You can see which one you're using in the Mac System Report (AppleUSBXHCIFL1100 vs AppleASMediaUSBXHCI). So try switching around ports. The Thunderbolt is a pure passthrough so that will use Apple's own USB-C controller.

These were my notes

* Front 5Gbps USB-C Fresco Logic

* Front 5Gbps USB-A Fresco Logic

* Rear 10Gbps USB-C ASMedia

* Rear USB-A, Right-hand 3 Fresco Logic

* Rear USB-A, Left-hand 1 ASMedia

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#106

Post by kalleboo »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #46
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is thunderbolt not copper?

It doesn't get as long! Long copper.

Thunderbolt cables also have mini coax cables inside of them rather than twisted pair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBWnb0ZIlEA

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#107

Post by geerlingguy »

dotwaffle wrote: post #83
qurren wrote: post #82

What NAS drives can support anywhere near 25 Gbps?

A single PCIe-3 nvme drive will saturate it on a sequential read load.

Also a RAIDZ array (or just mdadm or BTRFS) with a cache in front can easily hit a couple GB/sec even on more consumer level hardware.

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#108

Post by mgerdts »

I wonder if similar results would come from just adding a second 10 Gb NIC. If his workload runs SMB multichannel at sufficient queue depth, the load should spread across the multiple paths. If the queue depth is always 1, SMB multichannel is not helping on the 25 Gb NIC either.

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#109

Post by pyvpx »

danw1979 wrote: post #56
voxadam wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

hey. hey. not everyone’s on board with this packet switching fad, buster. what a man does in his own homelab, even if it does involve ATM, is none of our business.

You cell switching cretins are still around?! Back under your rock!! Shoo, shooo!

Re: Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio

#110

Post by egorfine »

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 use several of those UGREENs and they work perfectly fine out of the box and for sustained load as well.
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