[Bob Zelin]

replies below –

We have installed a quick and dirty 10G ethernet setup in our company that partially works and consists of the following:

reply – you thought this would be easy, right ?

– A 2010 Mac Pro workstation with 10G pci card
– A Mac Mini i7 with a 10G ethernet card in a Sonnet thunderbolt chassis. With attached tunderbolt RAID. We use the Mini as storage server, LTO Backup station, Davinci Resolve Database Server

reply – the Mac Mini is not a suitable server. You are sharing a x4 lane single thunderbolt buss between the thunderbolt RAID (you have not said what model this is), and a Sonnet Twin 10G product for connection to your Netgear switch. You will get crappy performance. And if you are running macOS 10.13 Server – forget it, this software no longer works (everything was fine until 10.13).

– A Mac Pro 2013, which is our color grading workstation.
– A small Netgear switch with two 10G ports and 1G ports.

reply – so you have a 10G backplane, but your connection to your clients is 1G, which means you get a max of
100 MB/sec per client – barely enough for 4K or 6K work – and on a Mac Mini server – forget it. And you did not say how much RAM you had in the Mac Mini (do you have 16 Gig) – and you did not say what your thunderbolt RAID is –
is it a Promise Pegasus R8, or G-Tech Studio XL with 8 drives – because if you are using a 4 bay or 6 bay, its never going to give you reliable playback – even if you had a Mac Pro cylinder as the server (which you don’t – you have the Mac Mini).

The old Mac Pro and the Mac Mini are connected over 10G ethernet via the switch. The new Mac Pro is connected to the Mac Mini via thunderbolt networking.

REPLY – you will get terrible performance from the “new Mac Pro” via Thunderbolt 2. Thunderbolt bridging network connection is absolutely useless.

Even if it looked like an elegant and cheap solution we found that thunderbolt networking does not work. We have sometimes good transfer speeds but very unreliable.

reply – that is right. If you simply do AJA System Test or Blackmagic Speed Test on a thunderbolt bridge connection – you will see wildly varying speeds – you get 800 MB/sec, then you get 56 MB/sec – up and down. It’s not like Ethernet where you get consistant speeds. when your transmission speed drops down, you get stuttering playback. But that’s ok – you are doing everything wrong anyway – you probably don’t have an 8 bay RAID array, you don’t have 16 Gig of RAM in the server, the server is not powerful enough to handle this task, and you are using thunderbolt 2 bridging for connection to one of your computers. So you are doing everything wrong.

After reading on this and other forums it looks like it’s the consensus that thunderbolt networking just does not work properly. Has anyone here managed to get a thunderbolt networking setup between two Macs to work reliably?

reply – no. Thunderbolt 3 is better, but it’s still not as good as a simple thunderbolt to 10G adaptor from Promise or Sonnet (or the new iMac Pro). See – you should have kept reading and just bought a QNAP or Synology with 8 drives and a 10G port. You would have saved a lot of time and aggravation (and money).

The transfer speeds between the old Mac Pro and the Mac Mini over 10G are generally good. But strangely read speed from Pro to Mini maxes out at around 500MB/sec while write speed goes up to 800MB/sec. (The TB RAID can do over 1000GB/sec). Is that what can be expected or are there any performance tweaks that I don’t know of? SMB signing is off and jumbo frames are on.

reply – as I stated above, you have too much of a load on your Mac Mini on the single x4 lane thunderbolt 2 buss. You will get one computer to work – add in the second computer, and BOOM – everything will get sucked down, because you don’t have the bandwidth.
I have to assume that you had a lot of this stuff lying around. Had you gotten an antique Mac Pro 4,1 from 2009, and put an external RAID on it, with a PCIe 10G card (yes, you still need 8 drives) – you would have gotten a working system.

As the current setup does not work for the new Mac Pro we will upgrade to a dedicated storage box very soon.
The most elegant solution looks like a combined 10G / thunderbolt box from Qnap (TVS-1582TU or similar). We would connect either the Mac Mini or the new Mac Pro to the Qnap via thunderbolt and the rest via 10G ethernet. This would spare us from getting additional pieces like a 10G switch and more TB>10G boxes.
As this setup would require the Qnap to act as a switch / bridge from TB to 10G I would like to ask what the experiences with such a setup here on the forum. Does TB networking via the Qnap show similar problems like between two Macs or does that work well?

REPLY – once again, you are wrong. You should not connect your computers to the QNAP via thunderbolt. Connect via 10G Ethernet. Don’t worry – there are lots of NEW cheap 10G switches coming out (some are out) in 2018 that will allow you to have full 10G connectivity to the QNAP. And you are picking the wrong QNAP. You have a limited budget – you can get a better system from them for less money. And cheaper thunderbolt 3 to 10G adaptors are about to come out. Same with cheaper PCIe 10G cards. We are approaching NAB 2018, you know !

Another solution would be to get a 10G only box from Qnap or another vendor & more TB>10G boxes & a switch with more ports and connect everything over 10G ethernet. Is there anything that speaks against the mixed TB / 10G setup and for the 10G only?

REPLY – this is the correct setup. All computers get a 10G PCIe card, or thunderbolt to 10G adaptor. All these ports go into a 10G switch. The switch goes into the 10G port of the QNAP or Synology (remember, 8 drives, 16 gig of RAM minimum). And then IF you know how to set all this up, everything will work.

Hey – I made tons of mistakes when I started doing this. And guess what – I still make tons of mistakes. What you will learn is that just because someone releases a new product – GUESS WHAT – they don’t always work as advertised. This is what learning is all about – suffering. And when you eventually figure all of this out – then you can say “I know how to do this”. And I still make mistakes.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

I became a fan of Spike Jonze with Beastie Boys Sabotage (one of the best music videos ever) –
and this just blew me away. The entire crew (and cast ) was great in this, and it’s a great concept.
It’s nice when you have a big budget and can afford to work with an Alexa and real lenses.

bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

It’s hard to find distribution for Netstor these days. Areca makes a wonderful host card that works very well with Mac computers. The Netstor product is reliable, but most people stick with G-Tech Studio XL, Promise Pegasus, Maxx Digital or Areca. I am pretty sure that Maxx Digital can get a 16 bay thunderbolt 3 chassis without issue. To my knowledge, there are no G-Tech or Promise 12 or 16 bay RAID enclosures.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

yes –
Corning makes them. They are thunderbolt 2 only. There are currently no thunderbolt 3 optical cables.
They are expensive. You might as well stick with a 10G adaptor, and cheap Cat 6 cabling. Especially now, the thunderbolt 3 to 10G adaptors are under $300 US. Will Corning release thunderbolt 3 optical cables ? I have no idea.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

I love the screen shots. It’s like listening to the Beatles. Not much has changed from then till now as far as the look of the system.

Bob

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

well this is disgusting, and I should be ashamed of myself (but since you are in Florida, and are probably familiar with ambulance chasers like Morgan & Morgan) – I bet the attorneys that will sue the construction company would be thrilled to purchase your footage.

OK – I am going to hell for even suggesting this.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

whats a waveform monitor ?
what’s an Eye Pattern ? What’s a Lightning Display –
aah – words from a distant past.
I would not worry about a tiny scope to look at SDI signals. The future (the near future ) is SDvOE – video over 10G Ethernet, (and fiber) not long SDI cables. And if you are running high quality cable, or if you have enough SDI repeaters (like from Blackmagic), you don’t need to worry if your eye pattern is falling apart, because you ran a
1080 signal 120 meters, and the square wave is falling apart.

Our ever changing industry. Want to buy my Tek WFM-90 (analog, no eye pattern or lighting) !

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Byron –
this is not good news. Everyone in the UK uses FCP X, and Boxx (running Win 10 or Linux) cannot run FCP X.
And there is more bad news. Your children are using FCP X, your wife, and your family are using FCP X, and because
you are selling Boxx in the UK, you will be unemployed soon, and living in a homeless shelter. You can ask Robin Kurz and Bill Davis for donations for food.

And back to the real world, companies like MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte (and even HP and Dell) are charging much less than Boxx, so unless you have a specialty render farm that you are building for Cinema 4D or Adobe After Effects, I am not sure exactly what the point of your post is . However if you would like to tell us about the new A class Ryzen processor Boxx systems – well, I am all ears.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

the answer to all your questions is NO.
NAB is one month away. I am anxious to see what Sonnet, Akitio, Promise, ATTO and Cal Digit will show – and IF they will actually SHOW a working Mac running speed tests with their thunderbolt 3 adaptors. Many people just talk about it.

My first (and only) experience with Thunderbolt 3 to 10G started in April 2017, at the NAB show, where I borrowed the brand new (in April 2017) Promise SanLink3 and plugged it into a new (in April 2017) MacBook Pro connected to a QNAP TS-1685. That’s when I first saw the 350 MB/sec WRITE and 1000 MB/sec READ. Right next to it, on the same QNAP was a Sonnet Twin 10G (thunderbolt 2) connected to a 6,1 Mac Pro Cylinder – to the SAME QNAP, and I got 800 MB/sec READ/WRITE. To this day, I have no idea of why the write speed on the Promise was only 350 MB/sec, and now, I have installed over 20 Promise SanLink3 adaptors on assorted Mac computers, all with the same results.

I just don’t have the real world experience with the other THUNDERBOLT 3 boxes. My experience with this, is identical to my experience with QNAP. Someone buys it, I try it out, and I see if that model works great, or works terribly. I have no “magic connections” to try this stuff out. Someone has to be the guinea pig, and I am often the one that gets to test it out.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

still no solution Nick ?

these are the manufacturers –
Promise
https://promise.com/us/Products/SANLink/SANLink3-T1

Sonnet
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/twin10g-thunderbolt3.html

Akitio
https://www.akitio.com/adapters/t3t

ATTO
https://www.atto.com/products/thunderbolt-adapters/thunderlink/thunderbolt-to-ethernet/TLNT-2102-D01
** it appears that ATTO is not making an external Thunderbolt 3 to 10Gbase-T, just SFP+ so I show a
thunderbolt 2 to 10Gbase-T.

And of course, your question is “so which one will to 900 MB/sec READ AND WRITE, and not 350 WRITE and 1000 READ (like the Promise SanLink3) so I can get the same performance at the iMac Pro Aquantia 107 chip 10G port.

and perhaps your next question is “why don’t these four companies show the specs for READ and WRITE transmission speed on a computer in their descriptions ?” –

Anyway, those are your four choices. I only know the R/W specs on the Promise. Perhaps at NAB 2018, companies will show these products hooked up to a computer and drive array for demonstration (maybe not).

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com