• Storage & Archiving

  Thunderbolt optical cables – 10 meters long

  Posted by Bob Zelin on November 10, 2013 at 7:02 pm

  https://www.eaccu-tech.com/thunderbolt/active-optical-cable-33ft-10m-thunderbolt/

  thanks to Greg’s persistence on this issue, you can see here –
  https://www.corning.com/CableSystems/OpticalCablesbyCorning/where-to-buy/default.aspx

  that Corning will in fact release thunderbolt optical cables as long as 330′ long ! This means that you will be possibly able to use a new Mac Pro with TBolt 2 as a server, and run these cables instead of using a 10G switch. The 33′ long cable will sell at $325, so I can’t even imagine what the 330′ cable will cost, but for a small workgroup, with 5 users or under, this does in fact look promising.

  So THANKS GREG for your persistence.

  Bob Zelin
  ps – it currently appears that no one is talking about releasing a thunderbolt hub or switch, so you will be “stuck” with buying a new Mac Pro to accomplish this. Not a bad thing to be “stuck” with, however.

  Bob Zelin

  Bob Zelin
  Rescue 1, Inc.
  maxavid@cfl.rr.com

  Bob Zelin replied 12 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Alex Gerulaitis

  November 10, 2013 at 9:29 pm

  Bob, can optical cables be used with existing TB ports w/o transceivers?
• 

  Bob Zelin

  November 11, 2013 at 2:27 am

  I have never used these. But according to these websites, yes – they just plug in, and work. I have no idea of how an optical transceiver is going to work – I guess it’s buss powered, but I find it amazing – especially on a long laser, like the 330′ thunderbolt cable – that it can be buss powered from the Thunderbolt port.

  I am only looking at this now, because our friend Greg was so cranky about all of this. But (in contrast to the article I posted about current Thunderbolt 1 tests that were not wonderful so far) – Greg in fact may be 100%, at least with Thunderbolt 2, and this may be a cheap way (relatively speaking) to get a small workgroup (under 5 users) to all connect to one storage array. And who knows what the future holds. There may be no Thunderbolt 2 switches or hubs now, but who knows what will come out in the near future. Certainly companies like Sonnet are trying to make as much Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 products as possible. So a company like this may in fact come up with something.

  Bob Zelin

  Bob Zelin
  Rescue 1, Inc.
  maxavid@cfl.rr.com

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up