5 ms·

On the topic of wired vs wireless... Has anyone had experience doing anything ridiculous such as getting a 40Gbit Ethernet adapter for say, their macbook? https

On the topic of wired vs wireless... Has anyone had experience doing anything ridiculous such as getting a 40Gbit Ethernet adapter for say, their macbook? https://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATTO/TLNQ3402D00/ https://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATTO/TLNQ3402D00/

musicale 6y ago
Kind of amazing that a macbook pro has four 40 Gb/s ports... and none of them are ethernet. Compare to 1 Gb/s ethernet which was rapidly adopted by Apple laptops as well as desktops. (Though you can currently get a Mac mini (!) with 10 Gb/s ethernet built in - if you can find something to connect it to.) I've used thunderbolt cables to connect laptops together for fast data transfer. I think in order to get decent performance I had to get disable the software ethernet bridge.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  >and none of them are ethernet. Might have something to do with the fact that 8P8C is as thick as the entire laptop.
  - andrewshadura 6y ago
    That can be easily worked around with flat retractable sockets PCMCIA Ethernet cards had in the past.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      You mean this? https://twitter.com/Infoseepage/status/938837890494169088 https://twitter.com/Infoseepage/status/938837890494169088 Looks really bad for longetivity.
- justinclift 6y ago
  > ... with 10 Gb/s ethernet built in - if you can find something to connect it to. Just as a data point, it's not expensive to add 10GbE (or higher) to a desktop or server/NAS if you're ok with getting 2nd hand gear from Ebay. Gear from Mellanox (specifically) is pretty robust (eg rarely bad), and the ConnectX-3 and above series are dirt cheap. eg: https://www.ebay.com/itm/MCX353A-FCBS-MELLANOX-CONNECTX-3-40GBE-56GBE-SINGLE-PORT-QSFP-CARD-CX353A/254603266377 https://www.ebay.com/itm/MCX353A-FCBS-MELLANOX-CONNECTX-3-40... Note, I don't know that seller at all. It was just one of the first items in the Ebay search results. :)
- Legogris 6y ago
  Those are Ethernet ports, just SFP+ ports rather than the RJ45 copper you're probably used to. I've never seen RJ45 ports > 10Gbps. Even 10Gbps is more often than not SFP+. Even if Cat8 can theoretically can 40Gbps, it wouldn't really make sense to put copper for those speeds today IMO. This device looks to be target for network engineers, who can use it for testing and benchmarking infrastructure, or for installations that will most likely be in or next to racks rather than on desktops. You could just pop a transceiver module that will convert the port to RJ45. The price of those is peanuts compared to the 2k list price of this device, and the reverse isn't viable.
- ben-schaaf 6y ago
  IIRC each side of the macbook pro only has a single Thunderbolt controller. So it's actually 2x 2 ports sharing 40Gb/s. If you need more than 40Gb/s, for say dual external gpus, you'd need to use cables on opposite sides.

musicale 6y ago

Kind of amazing that a macbook pro has four 40 Gb/s ports... and none of them are ethernet. Compare to 1 Gb/s ethernet which was rapidly adopted by Apple laptops as well as desktops. (Though you can currently get a Mac mini (!) with 10 Gb/s ethernet built in - if you can find something to connect it to.) I've used thunderbolt cables to connect laptops together for fast data transfer. I think in order to get decent performance I had to get disable the software ethernet bridge.

Hamuko 6y ago
>and none of them are ethernet. Might have something to do with the fact that 8P8C is as thick as the entire laptop.
- andrewshadura 6y ago
  That can be easily worked around with flat retractable sockets PCMCIA Ethernet cards had in the past.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    You mean this? https://twitter.com/Infoseepage/status/938837890494169088 https://twitter.com/Infoseepage/status/938837890494169088 Looks really bad for longetivity.
justinclift 6y ago
> ... with 10 Gb/s ethernet built in - if you can find something to connect it to. Just as a data point, it's not expensive to add 10GbE (or higher) to a desktop or server/NAS if you're ok with getting 2nd hand gear from Ebay. Gear from Mellanox (specifically) is pretty robust (eg rarely bad), and the ConnectX-3 and above series are dirt cheap. eg: https://www.ebay.com/itm/MCX353A-FCBS-MELLANOX-CONNECTX-3-40GBE-56GBE-SINGLE-PORT-QSFP-CARD-CX353A/254603266377 https://www.ebay.com/itm/MCX353A-FCBS-MELLANOX-CONNECTX-3-40... Note, I don't know that seller at all. It was just one of the first items in the Ebay search results. :)
Legogris 6y ago
Those are Ethernet ports, just SFP+ ports rather than the RJ45 copper you're probably used to. I've never seen RJ45 ports > 10Gbps. Even 10Gbps is more often than not SFP+. Even if Cat8 can theoretically can 40Gbps, it wouldn't really make sense to put copper for those speeds today IMO. This device looks to be target for network engineers, who can use it for testing and benchmarking infrastructure, or for installations that will most likely be in or next to racks rather than on desktops. You could just pop a transceiver module that will convert the port to RJ45. The price of those is peanuts compared to the 2k list price of this device, and the reverse isn't viable.
ben-schaaf 6y ago
IIRC each side of the macbook pro only has a single Thunderbolt controller. So it's actually 2x 2 ports sharing 40Gb/s. If you need more than 40Gb/s, for say dual external gpus, you'd need to use cables on opposite sides.