Until now, I was using an Ethernet iMac linked to a new Thunderbolt MacbookPro retina. VEP worked great and smoothly (with the Apple thunderbolt/ethernet adapter).
I just received the new iMac27-i7-32Gb. No Ethernet port, just thunderbolt. I want to replace my old iMac with this one. So the successful VEP thunderbolt - ethernet connection will be replaced by a VEP5 thunderbolt-thunderbolt.
Anyone has any experience on this? Should I expect any problem?
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thunderbolt - thunderbolt
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IP over thunderbolt is not implemented in the OS so it is not currently possible to just hook these together and get it to work. Hopefully in the future this will work. But until you see something in system network preferences that allows you to enable IP over thunderbolt, you're out of luck.
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And now - interestingly enough in 10.9, ethernet over thunderbolt IS implemented.
Its quite exciting, but also problematic at the same time.
A number of folk with FAR more knowledge than myself have been looking into this in the last week or so, and have found it to be a
"work in progress" at best.For what its worth, they were testing current MBP to current MBAir. The theoretical limits they achieved (by sending data not being read off the internal SSD's was over 700MB/s. (FAR beyond giga-ethernet, and approaching 10giga, when overheads are taken into account.
The problem is that there are (as yet) unexplained pauses in transmission and reception. No packets lost, but just plain interruptions.
They looked into all sorts of possibilities, but as of yet have been unable to figure out exactly whats going on. They were trying to independentally verify results of some preliminary research being done by arstechnica (I think it was them - slightly flaky memory) - and attempting to further identify where the problems lay.
I seem to remember the general consensus being that for now, using a t/bolt to ethernet adaptor is better for "real time" applications. But that they fully expect it to get better, and offer up to 10GB (and possibly higher with TBolt2 - which was only on the MBP) ethernet using direct connection in the not too distant future - pending updates from apple.
I await information about this eagily. The setup of the ethernet adaptor inside prefs is quite elegant - and WILL allow a single new Mac Pro (with its 6 tbolt ports) to have multiple direct connections to multiple other computers - WITHOUT using a switch. I don't know if this is going to work smoothly with VEP5 or not though - but it is certainly VERY interesting.
I'd love to hear more discussion on this from others with further knowledge.
(PS - another mac user in a private dev forum I'm involved with has successfully tested using t-bolt ethernet with another piece of audio software communicating between two machines. Exciting times)
EDIT : Just some extra information from others who are experimenting with this.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1657957 - similar results to what my friend saw. But no reports on the interruptions (I only read the first few posts)Here's arstechnica's take on it
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9-brings-fast-but-choppy-thunderbolt-networking/
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And just another update.
With the right tuning and effort (takes some degree of geekery) the t/bolt to t/bolt networking IS very very capable. It seems that it takes a little more effort than the ars technica guys put in - but with the right knowledge and network understanding, it appears that 10Gb networking is "go" with 10.9 and new mac hardware.
Combine this with PCIe storage, and many interesting possibilities open up!
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colony nofi- Would love to find out how you made this work! I'm trying to set up a laptop rig, hopefully using the newest MacBook Pro. The Gigabit Ethernet - Thunderbolt adaptor doesn't work at all. Would you mind sharing? Thanks!
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How did you set the Ethernet parameter ?
Can you give the figures ?
MacBook Pro M3 MAX 128 GB 8TB - 2 x 48" screen --- Logic Pro --- Mir Pro 3D --- Most of the VI libs, a few Synch... libs --- Quite a few Kontakt libs --- CS80 fanatic -
In System Preferences>Network, if you click the + to add another service, you get a choice of Thunderbolt Bridge, Thunderbolt1 or Thunderbolt2. These didn't exist until OS X 10.9. So this must be where you set it up. I don't have slave to test, but this is how IP over Firewire is configured. I gotta believe it works in a similar fashion for IP over Thunderbolt.
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What do you mean by it doesn't work? Are you able to connect to the slave at all? If not, have you set static IP's on the master and slave? I use the latest MacBook Retina with a Thunderbolt/ethernet adaptor, and the static IP's were my issue. I now connect perfectly to my PC slaves.@sylviesongs said:
colony nofi- Would love to find out how you made this work! I'm trying to set up a laptop rig, hopefully using the newest MacBook Pro. The Gigabit Ethernet - Thunderbolt adaptor doesn't work at all. Would you mind sharing? Thanks!
