10 ms·
Reliable 25 Gigabit Ethernet via Thunderbolt
- cs02rm0 8mo agoNow I just have to contrive the circumstances where this is useful to me. :)
- e40 8mo agoPorn?
- leosanchez 8mo agoWhat kind of porn requires 25 gigabits ?
- LeoPanthera 8mo agoA lot of porn.
- modderation 8mo agoAs a guess, large-scale volumetric or photogrammetric "datasets" could be difficult to stream over lesser interconnects.
- AdrianB1 8mo agoMind-blowing 3D stereoscopic 480 FPS with 11.2 audio channels with 768 kbps rate and spatial sound stage :D
- tgma 8mo agoUncompressed 8k ones
- mcny 8mo agoI don't know about the Ethernet part but it bothers me that even wifi has become faster than the wired USB port on our phones. All I want to do is copy over all the photos and videos from my phone to my computer but I have to baby sit the process and think whether I want to skip or retry a failed copy. And it is so slow. USB 2.0 slow. I guess everybody has given up on the idea of saving their photos and videos over USB?
- diogocp 8mo ago> USB 2.0 slow Many phones indeed only support USB 2.0. For example the base iPhone 17. The Pro does support USB 3.2, however. > I guess everybody has given up on the idea of saving their photos and videos over USB? Correct.
- ranguna 8mo agoWhy don't you get a phone with 3.0+ USB? My last two phones in the last 4 years had at least USB 3.1
- jacquesm 8mo agoWifi is fast but the latency is terrible and the reliability is even worse. It can go up and down like a yo-yo. USB is far more predictable even if it is a bit slower.
- rbanffy 8mo agoI have a cluster of 4 RPi Zero Ws and network reliability is not great. Since it is for the chaos, it’s fine, but it’s very common to have a node be offline at any given time. Even worse, the control plane is exposed, but for something that runs 3 Hercules mainframe emulation and two Altairs with MP/M, it’s fine.
- jacquesm 8mo agoI have a bunch of HA wifi connected sensors, I see them drop off and reconnect all the time it is most annoying.
- AdrianB1 8mo agoNot sure why this happens to you. I have HA with several dozens WiFi devices and I have only 2 devices (one relay, one sensor) that disconnect regularly, they have both poor WiFi signal, one in a basement and one far from the AP. Almost all are on 2.4 GHz, not by choice, but they work well.
- 8mo ago
- rbanffy 8mo agoWouldn’t this be useful for clustering Macs over TB5? Wasn’t the maximum bandwidth over USB-cables 5Gbps? With a switch, you could cluster more than just 4 Mac Studios and have a couple terabytes for very large models to work with.
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoI was hoping somebody would suggest that (and eventually try it out). With TB5, and deep pockets, you might probably also benchmark it against a setup with dedicated TB5 enclosures (e.g., Mercury Helios 5S). TB5 has PCIe 4.0 x4 instead of PCIe 3.0 x4 -- that should give you 50 GbE half-duplex instead of 25 GbE. You would need a different network card though (ConnectX-5, for example). Pragmatically though, you could also aggregate (bond) multiple 25 GbE network card ports (with Mac Studio, you have up to 6 Thunderbolt buses, so more than enough to saturate a 100GbE connection).
- rbanffy 8mo agoToo bad Jeff Geerling returned his Mac Studios to Apple. Would be lovely to see how 5x faster RDMA impacts the performance.
- geerlingguy 8mo ago25 Gbps isn't all that much. It would be good, but would be below the 40+ Gbps I was getting on the TB5 ring network. I think where it would show more significant speed up is on the AMD Strix Halo cluster. Except I haven't been able to get RDMA over Thunderbolt on there to work, so it'd be apples to oranges comparing ConnectX to Thunderbolt on Linux.
- pdrayton 8mo agoOddly enough, that’s exactly what I’ve been benchmarking - different ways of linking Strix Halo machines - with respect to throughput & latency. Posted a little bit re: the TB side of things on the Framework and Level1Techs forums but haven’t pulled everything together yet because the higher-speed Ethernet and Infiniband data is still being collected. So far my observations re: TB is that, on Strix Halo specifically, while latency can be excellent there seem to be some limits on throughput. My tests cap out at ~11Gbps unidir (Tx|Rx), ~22Gbps bidi (Tx+Rx). Which is wierd because the USB4 ports are advertised at 40Gbps bidi, the links report as 2x20Gbs, and are stable with no errors/flapping - so not a cabling problem. The issue seems rather specific to TB networking on Strix Halo using the USB4 links between machines. Emphasis to exclude common exceptions - other platforms eg Intel users getting well over 20Gbps; other mini PCs eg MS-1 Max USB4v2; local network eg I’ve measured loopback >100Gbps; or external storage where folk are seeing 18Gbps+ / numbers that align with their devices. Emd goal is to get hard data on all reasonably achievable link types. Already have data on TB & lower-speed Ethernet (switched & P2P), currently doing setup & tuning on some Mellanox cards to collect data for higher-speed Ethernet and IB. P2P-only for now; 100GbE switching is becoming mainstream but IB switches are still rather nutty. Happy to collaborate with any other folk interested in this topic. Reach out to (username at pm dot me).
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoRemote Time Machine backups are snappier than ever before :)
- notrustincloud 8mo agorsync...grsync...a solution for broken partial batch transfers since forever
- sschueller 8mo agoWould be useful if I had to debug my internet link and I only had a laptop.
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoIt also works on iPad Pro :)
- consp 8mo agoI recently did a complete disk backup/clone which only took 15 minutes instead of hours. Maxed the SSD which was being backed up at about 2.5GB/s.
- soneil 8mo agoPretty much anywhere you have networked storage? Gigabit is about on-par with pre-sata ATA133.
- userbinator 8mo agoThunderbolt is basically external PCIe, so this is not so surprising. High speed NICs do consume a relatively large amount of power. I have a feeling I've seen that logo on the board before.
- xattt 8mo agoThe PCI-E logo or the “octopus in a chip” logo? I’m more interested in the latter.
- userbinator 8mo agoThe octopus logo. Might've been on Aliexpess or one of the other Chinese marketplaces.
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoI don't know how to measure the direct power impact on a MacBook Pro (since it's got a battery), but the typical power consumption of these cards is 9 W, not much more than Aquantia 10 GBit cards. Also, if you remember where you saw that logo, please let me know!
- consp 8mo agoPlus 1-2.5w per active cable. You need the heatsinks as the cx4 cards expect active airflow, and active transceivers as well. I have a 10gbit dual port card in a Lenovo mini pc. There is no normal way to get any heat out of there so I put a 12v small radial fan in there as support. It works great at 5v: silent and cool. It is a fan though so might not suit your purpose.
- ZenDroid 8mo agoDo you mean active Thunderbolt cable? Short Thunderbolt cables (0.8m) are passive. https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/y5uokj/comment/islwtdo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/y5uokj/commen...
- zokier 8mo agoNote that you can do point-to-point network links directly with thunderbolt (and usb4). https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/ip-thunderbolt-connect-mac-computers-mchld53dd2f5/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/ip-thunderbolt-conn... etc
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoYes! However, I got around 15 Gbps with a Thunderbolt-only setup (TB3/TB4) = only 75% of the Ethernet setup. You'd also mostly be limited to short cables (1-2m) and a ring topology.
- admash 8mo agoAny idea why that would be the case?
- butvacuum 8mo agoThe linux implementation is quite poor. Among other issues, your answer is linux treats it as a TCP/IP link- so packets don't have any offloading for checksums, etc. it's also incomplete (ex- you have to physically unplug and replug the cord every time one side loses link- even a reboot). This is my firsthand experence trying to get some tablet motherboards to link up and work as a proxmox cluster w/ TB3 as the link between nodes.
- sponaugle 8mo agoI have a 3 node proxmox setup on MS-01s using a 25G Thunderbolt ring for Ceph, and indeed it took a lot of hoops to get it working correctly and reliably. I did manage to get it such that nodes can go up and down without needing to unplug anything, and the dynamic routing works if a node disappears. Performance is pretty good, with a more realistic 20ish gbit/sec.
- nodesocket 8mo agoI figured this was Jeff’s CTO Laboratory. I enjoy your channel. Are you kicking yourself for pulling the trigger on MS-01s now that MS-02 Ultras released?
- Nextgrid 8mo agoNeat, but the thermal design is absolutely terrible. Sticking that heatsink inside the aluminum case without any air circulation is awful.
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoYeah, it's because the network card adapter's heatsink is sandwiched between two PCBs. Not great, not terrible, works for me. The placement is mostly determined by the design of the OCP 2.0 connector. OCP 3.0 has a connector at the short edge of the card, which allows exposing/extending the heat sink directly to the outer case. If somebody has the talent, designing a Thunderbolt 5 adapter for OCP 3.0 cards could be a worthwhile project.
- Nextgrid 8mo agoA Flex PCB connecting the OCP2 connector would allow to put the converter board behind the NIC board, allowing the NIC board to be exposed to the aluminum case to use the case itself as a heatsink (would need a split case so the NIC board can be screwed to one side of the case, pressing the main chip against it via a thermal pad). As a stop-gap, I'd see if there was any way to get airflow into the case - I'd expect even a tiny fan would do much more than those two large heatsinks stuck onto the case (since the case itself has no thermal connection to the chip heatsink).
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoMy goal was to get a fanless setup (for a quiet office). If that's not a requirement just get the Raiden Digit Light One, which does have a fan (and otherwise the same network card). If I could design an adapter PCB myself, I would go straight to OCP 3.0, which allows for a much simpler construction, and TB5 speeds. Alternatively, there are DELL CX422A rNDC cards (R887V) that appear to have an OCP 2.0 connector but a better heatsink design.
- consp 8mo agoI'd be more worried about cooling the transceivers properly.
- consp 8mo agoI'm surprised you are only getting 20gbit/s. I did not expect PCIe to be be the limiting factor here. I've got a 100gbit cx4 card currently in a PCIe3 X4 slot (for reasons, don't judge) and it easily maxes that out. I would have expected the 25g cx4 cards to be at least able to get everything out of it. RDMA is required to achieve that in a useful way though. Edit: forgot is isn't "true" PCIe but tunneled.
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoThe limitation is Thunderbolt (32 Gbps theoretical limit for PCIe 3 tunneling).
- otterpro 8mo ago> reduces temperatures by at least 15 Kelvin, bringing the ambient enclosure temperature below 40 °C, I had to do a double-take when it mentioned Kelvin since That is physically impossible.
- sigio 8mo agoreduces temperatures by at least 15 Kelvin == the same as reduces temperatures by at least 15 Celcius. It 'reduces it by' ... not reduces it TO
- maratc 8mo agoIsn't "reduces temperatures by 15 Kelvin" the same as "reduces temperatures by 15 Celsius"?
- buildbot 8mo agoYes, Kelvin is only a linear offset from Celsius. (273.15 for anyone who doesn’t already know). It’s a little bit funny/coy to use it mixed with Celsius.
- madduci 8mo agoI still have issues under Linux (Kernel 6.14) and Thinderboldt 4 docking stations. The simply don't get recognised. But this is a cool solution
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoThanks! Have you tried the boltctl/rescan setup I mentioned in the post? It should get you going, as long as your Thunderbolt/USB4 setup is correct. If you're using an adapter card to add Thunderbolt functionality, then your mainboard needs to support that, and the card must be connected to a PCIe bus that's wired to the Intel PCH, not to the CPU.
- madduci 8mo agoYes, rescan, re-enroll too. But it still shows as disconnected. I don't know if the firmware is completely incompatible, but it is weird that under windows works and in Linux doesn't
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoDisconnected as in "network"? What PCIe card do you use? Can you update the firmware (maybe from Windows)? Also check the BIOS settings (try setting TB security to "No Security" or "User Authorization") Some OEM Mellanox cards can be cross-flashed to NVIDIA's stock firmware, maybe that's also relevant.
- madduci 8mo agoIt's embedded in the laptop (a HP ZBook from work). Disconnected as in network. Laptop charges, but signal doesn't work. With Thunderbolt 3 devices, it works. (The card itself is T4).
- omgtehlion 8mo agoHa! Been running these for years on both linux and windows (on lenovo x1 laptops). Using cheap chinese thunderbolt-to-nvme adapters + nvme-to-pcie boards + mellanox cx4 cards (recently got one cx5 and a solarflare x2). Pic of a previous cx3 (10 gig on tb3) setup: https://habrastorage.org/r/w780/getpro/habr/upload_files/d3c/939/f26/d3c939f26c369b668155a6cab5c34a1e.jpg https://habrastorage.org/r/w780/getpro/habr/upload_files/d3c... 10gig can saturate full speed, 25G in my experience rarely reaches same 20G as the author observed.
- kasey_junk 8mo agoIf you don’t mind me asking, what are you using these for? Saturating these seems like it would have reasonably few workloads outside of like cdn or multi-tenant scenarios. Curious what my lack of imagination is hiding here.
- geerlingguy 8mo agoI do media production, and sometimes move giant files (like ggufs) around my network, so 25 Gbps is more useful than 10 Gbps, if it's no too expensive.
- omgtehlion 8mo agoOfficially: to access NAS, get raw market-data files (tens to hundreds of gigabytes a day), not needed on laptop every day, but only once in a while to fix or analyze something. Really: because I can, and it is fun. I upgraded my home lan to 10G, because used 10G hardware is cheap (and now 25G enters the same price range).
- sponaugle 8mo ago"because I can, and it is fun." The best answer! I am most of the way done with upgrading most of my homelab to 100G from 10G, but there really isn't a practical reason for it. 100G has dropped in price so much as datacenters are all about 400/800G now.
- throwaway2037 8mo agoThis is an outstanding blog post. Initially, the title did little to captivate me, but the blog post was so well written that I got nerd-sniped. Who knew this little adapter was so fascinating! I wonder if the manufacturer is buying the Mellanox cards used from data center tear-downs. The author claims they can be had for only 20 USD online. That seems too good to be true! Small thing: I just checked Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=thunderbolt+25G&crid=2RHL4ZJL96Z9U&sprefix=thunderbolt+25g%2Caps%2C593&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=thunderbolt+25G&crid=2RHL4ZJL96Z9... I cannot find anything for less than 285 USD. The blog post gave a price of 174 USD. I have no reason to disbelieve the author, but a bummer to see the current price is 110 USD more!
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoThank you! I think, tragically, the blog post has caused this price increase. The offers on Amazon are most likely all drop shippers trying to gauge a price that works for them. You might have better luck ordering directly from China for a fraction of the price: https://detail.1688.com/offer/836680468489.html https://detail.1688.com/offer/836680468489.html
- addandsubtract 8mo agoAliExpress sells them, too, which is much more accessible for anyone living in the EU.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- geerlingguy 8mo agoI saw the blog post last week and immediately bought the last one on that Amazon listing for the original price... hopefully they restock soon! I'm going to try a couple other fan assisted cooling options, as I'd like to keep the setup reasonably compact. I just ran fiber to my desk and I have a more expensive QNAP unit that does 10G SFP+, but this will let me max out the connection to my NAS.
- project2501a 8mo agonitpicking but why would someone type `sudo su` vs `sudo -i`
- Bjartr 8mo agoI've mostly only ever seen `sudo su` in tutorials, so someone who's only familiar with the command through those is one possible reason why.
- flounder3 8mo agoMuscle memory for folks who have been doing it since before -i was an option. I still instinctively type `sudo su -` because it worked consistently on older deployments. When you have to operate a fleet of varying ages and distributions, you tend to quickly learn [if only out of frustration] what works everywhere vs only on the newer stuff. `sudo su - <user>` also seems easier for me to type than `sudo -i -u <user>`
- thadk 8mo agoDoes this manufacturer's practice pattern of repackaging data center components (e.g. Mellanox) imply any up and coming product creation opportunities?
- drnick1 8mo agoI used to have an SFP28 Mellanox card in my home server, but went back to a simple 2.5G Ethernet port for the LAN side. The Mellanox card ran hot and needed an extra fan near it to dissipate the heat. It was cool but there was no real benefit other than occasionally when transferring some large files. Until motherboards include SFP ports it's probably not worth the effort at all in home setting; external adaptors like the one presented here are unreliable and add several ms of latency.
- kohlschuetter 8mo agoFor reference, I'm seeing pings from my Mac to my Linux boxes (Lenovo Tiny5) at well under 1ms, not much worse than between them directly. But yeah, your mileage may vary.
- omgtehlion 8mo agoYep, these cards need a fan (or any kind of directed air flow). Where did you get "several ms of latency" figure from? I have not measured external card, but may be I should do it... Because cards themselves have latency in range of microseconds, not millis.
- drnick1 8mo agoI haven't tested this particular Thunderbolt SFP adapter, but my experience with a TP-Link 1Gbps USB adapter is that it adds about 4ms of latency. Far from being unusable and similar to WiFi perhaps, but worse than PCIe cards that should be <1ms.
- serf 8mo agoit's all just driver/options crap if I were to take a guess. there are a lot of usb options that matter, and tp-link ships lots of realtek chipsets that require very special driver incantations that a lot of the linux drivers simply don't replicate. two+ layers of bad options will surely add 4ms quick.
- kalleboo 8mo ago
- shantara 8mo agoThat is really cool to read. And here I am, still running my home network on a measly 1Gbit Ethernet. I considered upgrading, but the equipment power consumption even when idle makes it an expensive proposition to consider just for fun.
- whatever1 8mo agoAny idea why ethernet stagnated in terms of speed? There was a time it was so much faster compared to usb. Now even wifi seems to be faster. Sure one can buy nice ethernet cards and cables, but the reality is that if you grab a random laptop/desktop from best buy and a cable, you are looking at best at a 2.5Gb/s speed.
- fulafel 8mo agoWireless happened, I'd think. People started using wifi and cellular data for everything, so applications had to adapt to this lowest common denominator, and consumer broadband demand for faster-than-wifi speeds isn't there. Plus operators put all their money into cellular infra leaving no money to update broadband infra.
- Gigachad 8mo agoWifi now can pretty realistically beat 2.5gbit/s while most Ethernet is still gigabit. It just seems strange to live in a world where the average laptop will get a faster connection speed over wifi than plugged in to Ethernet.
- fulafel 8mo agoEthernet is following suit to 2.5G which is otherwise a nonsensical step for ethernet speeds, I think this is further evidence that everything just follows wifi now.
- mschuster91 8mo ago> Any idea why ethernet stagnated in terms of speed? There was a time it was so much faster compared to usb. Now even wifi seems to be faster. Practically spoken, a lot of the transfer speed advertised by wifi is marketing hogwash barely backed by reality, especially in congested environments. > Sure one can buy nice ethernet cards and cables, but the reality is that if you grab a random laptop/desktop from best buy and a cable, you are looking at best at a 2.5Gb/s speed. For both laptops and desktops, PCI lanes. Intel doesn't provide many lanes, so manufacturers don't want to waste valuable lanes permanently for capabilities most people don't ever need. For laptops in particular, power draw. The faster you push copper, the more power you need. And laptops have even less PCIe lanes available to waste. For desktops, it's a question of market demand. Again - most applications don't need ultra high transfer rate, most household connectivity is DSL and (G)PON so 1 GBit/s is enough to max out the uplink. And those few users that do need higher transfer rates can always install a PCIe card, especially as there is a multitude of different options to provide high bandwidth connectivity.
- cyberax 8mo agoHa. I got one of the 10G Thunderbolt adapters a several years ago. And eventually started having problems with Zoom calls around noon. With dropped connections and stuttering. Zoom restarts usually fixed the problem. After it happened 3-4 times, I started debugging. It turned out that we usually get at least a bit of sunlight around noon, as it burns away the morning clouds. And my Thunderbolt box was in direct sunlight, and eventually started overheating. And a Zoom restart made it fall back onto the Wifi connection instead of wired. I fixed that by adding a small USB-powered fan to the Thunderbolt box as a temporary workaround. I just realized that it's been like this for the last 3 years: https://pics.ealex.net/s/overheat https://pics.ealex.net/s/overheat
- jamiek88 8mo agoAs my old grandad said, there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary repair!
- the_real_cher 8mo ago> the biggest downside of the PX adapter is that it gets really hot, like not touchable hot. Sometimes, either the network connection silently disappeared or (sadly) my Mac crashed with a kernel panic in the network driver. Apple has assured me that this was not a security issue. Other than that, the PX seems to do the job. Made me chuckle.
- bob_theslob646 8mo agoPlease forgive me for my ignorance, but are there currently any ways of being able to write data down at that speed? I see 2026 PCIe 5.0 NVMe advertising theoretical 14gb/s but not sure how feasible even that is.
- kalleboo 8mo ago25 gigabit/s is 3125 megabyte/s, the SSD in my 4 year old laptop can write at nearly 6000 megabyte/s.
- hnuser123456 8mo agoPCIe 5 drives max out at about 14 GBps (bytes), which is ~112 gbps (bits). Displayport 2.1 UHBR20 is 80 gbps. USB4 maxes out at 80 gbps. As you can see, 1gbps ethernet is starting to look like stone age technology. 2.5gbps becoming the next step seems a bit strange when we were jumping orders of magnitude every few years before. But also, ethernet tends to be used on longer cables than DP or USB, and trying to push it much faster results in exponentially increasing losses to resistance and radiation, the cable starts acting like an antenna even with the twisted pairs. Fiber optics are much better suited to high speed long distance, but too expensive and fragile for consumer use.
- icelancer 8mo agoI've had a lot of problems with even 10GbE via Thunderbolt 3/4. Bandwidth-wise it works fine, but latency and jitter are issues. This means that stuff like high-speed cameras that need to be synchronized over Ethernet using Precision Time Protocol (PTP) tend to simply fail with these devices.
- pdrayton 8mo agoI’d heard similar complaints re: TB networking latency & jitter. Did some investigations and tuning on a pair of machines with USB4 ports connected via short TB5-rated cables. Eventually got the thunderbolt links to consistently beat the ether ones on both latency and jitter. And not just switched Ethernet either - even a direct Ethernet P2P link lost out to TB, though the difference there was small.
- icelancer 8mo agoInteresting - I'll try some other methods
- mrbluecoat 8mo agoIs this satire? > All other 25 GbE adapter solutions I’ve found so far ... have a spinning fan. ... the biggest downside of the PX adapter is that it gets really hot, like not touchable hot. Sometimes, either the network connection silently disappeared or (sadly) my Mac crashed with a kernel panic in the network driver. ... Other than that, the PX seems to do the job