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Damn, a Thunderbolt 2 PCIe card with two ports costs ~55€. That would make for one hell of a replacement for 10G Ethernet. Double the speed and cheaper. Does an

by metafex 12y ago

Damn, a Thunderbolt 2 PCIe card with two ports costs ~55€. That would make for one hell of a replacement for 10G Ethernet. Double the speed and cheaper. Does anyone know how the linux support for this is?

4ad 12y ago
10GbE cost is dominated by expensive switches, not by the cost of ethernet cards. This aside, Thunderbolt is not switched, so comparison is meaningless. There are very few opportunities where you use either Thunderbolt or Ethernet for the same application. The topology is very different.
- metafex 12y ago
  Still, for simple high-bandwidth networking needs it should suffice.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    Look at used infiniband gear, you will get much better support (hardware, software, cabling). Same price or lower.
- kijiki 12y ago
  If you're willing to leave the cisco/Arista/etc cocoon, NIC costs are actually the big ticket items. http://whiteboxswitch.com/collections/10-gigabit-ethernet-switches/products/edge-core-as5600-52x http://whiteboxswitch.com/collections/10-gigabit-ethernet-sw... $5595 for the switch, $699 for the software. You can split the 4 40G ports into 16 10G ports using splitter cables, giving a total of 64 10G ports: (5595+699)/64 = $98.34 per 10G port. A 1M cable is $30 from here: http://www.fiberyes.com/sfp-cable-cab-10gsfp-p1m-30 http://www.fiberyes.com/sfp-cable-cab-10gsfp-p1m-30 So $122.34 for switch and cable. I've never seen a 10G NIC that cheap per port. (disclosure: I co-founded Cumulus, who is behind the software in this price comparison)
  - wmf 12y ago
    The problem for hobbyists is that they usually want to buy more like 8 ports, not 64.
mbell 12y ago
All the addon cards I've seen are PCIe-2.0 x4 cards, thats 2GB/sec each direction. A single thunderbolt 2 ports would need ~2.5GB/sec each direction to 'max out', a pair would need 5GB/sec. They seem to be assuming a significant amount of the TB bandwidth will be used by the video passthrough capability. That makes these cards a not so great option if your goal is only to connect high speed external devices, not monitors.

by metafex 12y ago

4ad 12y ago

10GbE cost is dominated by expensive switches, not by the cost of ethernet cards. This aside, Thunderbolt is not switched, so comparison is meaningless. There are very few opportunities where you use either Thunderbolt or Ethernet for the same application. The topology is very different.

metafex 12y ago
Still, for simple high-bandwidth networking needs it should suffice.
- sitkack 12y ago
  Look at used infiniband gear, you will get much better support (hardware, software, cabling). Same price or lower.
kijiki 12y ago
If you're willing to leave the cisco/Arista/etc cocoon, NIC costs are actually the big ticket items. http://whiteboxswitch.com/collections/10-gigabit-ethernet-switches/products/edge-core-as5600-52x http://whiteboxswitch.com/collections/10-gigabit-ethernet-sw... $5595 for the switch, $699 for the software. You can split the 4 40G ports into 16 10G ports using splitter cables, giving a total of 64 10G ports: (5595+699)/64 = $98.34 per 10G port. A 1M cable is $30 from here: http://www.fiberyes.com/sfp-cable-cab-10gsfp-p1m-30 http://www.fiberyes.com/sfp-cable-cab-10gsfp-p1m-30 So $122.34 for switch and cable. I've never seen a 10G NIC that cheap per port. (disclosure: I co-founded Cumulus, who is behind the software in this price comparison)
- wmf 12y ago
  The problem for hobbyists is that they usually want to buy more like 8 ports, not 64.

mbell 12y ago

All the addon cards I've seen are PCIe-2.0 x4 cards, thats 2GB/sec each direction. A single thunderbolt 2 ports would need ~2.5GB/sec each direction to 'max out', a pair would need 5GB/sec. They seem to be assuming a significant amount of the TB bandwidth will be used by the video passthrough capability. That makes these cards a not so great option if your goal is only to connect high speed external devices, not monitors.