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darthraige

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 8, 2007
1,612
2
Coruscant, but Boston will do.
What is the point of having Dual Gigabit Ethernet Ports on the MacPro? Haven't full understood that yet. Do they work off each other and double the speed on things? Or is it just for if you had an external hard drive or something?
 

djrhettmc

macrumors newbie
Jul 26, 2007
2
0
webserver or Xsan/Xserve

We use the dual ethernet for video production network with Xsan and Xserve. Number 1 is for metadata to the dedicated xserve network. Number 2 is to connect to our building network and get the interwebs....

You could also use it for a webserver.
 

Cromulent

macrumors 604
Oct 2, 2006
6,802
1,096
The Land of Hope and Glory
What is the point of having Dual Gigabit Ethernet Ports on the MacPro? Haven't full understood that yet. Do they work off each other and double the speed on things? Or is it just for if you had an external hard drive or something?

Two networks. Having the Mac Pro as a gateway machine. There are lots of different things that could use two ethernet ports.
 

RJS9S

macrumors member
Jun 28, 2007
37
0
u could possible hook it up for xbox live? maybe 1 for file transferring and the other or internet. im sure theres many options.
 

SDAVE

macrumors 68040
Jun 16, 2007
3,573
599
Nowhere
Server motherboards have dual lan ports because of "backup" purposes. If one port goes bad, the second one is always available.

I use one for direct connection to my server and the second one for the internet.
 

Multimedia

macrumors 603
Jul 27, 2001
5,212
0
Santa Cruz CA, Silicon Beach
They Can Be Used For MultiProcessing Compression Work Among Macs On LAN

You have to buy at least an 8 Port Managed Hub with Link Aggregation from Netgear for $130 or 16 Ports or 24 Ports and you hook all the dual Ethernet Macs into that to share Qmaster dedicated cores among all of them for super fast rendering and compression of video.

I need someone to help me learn how to do that
. I can't even get ONE Mac to run Qmaster correctly so far. Anyone here care to help me please PM me off line. Thanks.
 

Mxsix

macrumors member
Dec 28, 2006
84
0
On my PC, I use one ethernet port for the internet and local LAN. The other ethernet is for a private network with a backup server, etc.
 

ChrisBrightwell

macrumors 68020
Apr 5, 2004
2,294
0
Huntsville, AL
On my PC, I use one ethernet port for the internet and local LAN. The other ethernet is for a private network with a backup server, etc.
This is what most folks use dual ethernet for. One for the "light" network, which handles email and web traffic and what-not, then another for the "heavy" network, be it an Xsan server or regular backups or whatever else.

The idea is that one can be saturated all the time w/out hurting productivity.
 

hayduke

macrumors 65816
Mar 8, 2005
1,177
2
is a state of mind.
You can also use it to create a LAN between two machines. I used to do this to fast network my laptop to my Mac Pro, both of which are gigabit and should offer fast data access between machines. Sadly, the transfer rates are slower than 802.11g and I can't figure out why! So, I just wirelessly network them.
 

Cromulent

macrumors 604
Oct 2, 2006
6,802
1,096
The Land of Hope and Glory
You can also use it to create a LAN between two machines. I used to do this to fast network my laptop to my Mac Pro, both of which are gigabit and should offer fast data access between machines. Sadly, the transfer rates are slower than 802.11g and I can't figure out why! So, I just wirelessly network them.

Are you sure you have a cat 5 / 5e ethernet cable?
 

SDAVE

macrumors 68040
Jun 16, 2007
3,573
599
Nowhere
You can also use it to create a LAN between two machines. I used to do this to fast network my laptop to my Mac Pro, both of which are gigabit and should offer fast data access between machines. Sadly, the transfer rates are slower than 802.11g and I can't figure out why! So, I just wirelessly network them.

I a Windows box server connected via a crossover CAT6 cable and I get about 70MB/sec....direct connection. Something must be wrong with your setup.

Try putting the subnets on different ones for each connection. I have also used the network while using AirPort without problems.
 

yg17

macrumors Pentium
Aug 1, 2004
15,027
3,002
St. Louis, MO
You can also use it to create a LAN between two machines. I used to do this to fast network my laptop to my Mac Pro, both of which are gigabit and should offer fast data access between machines. Sadly, the transfer rates are slower than 802.11g and I can't figure out why! So, I just wirelessly network them.

Sounds like you may be doing something wrong.

As someone said, use a different subnet. For my computer-computer network, I use 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 for the computers. My wireless router hands out 192.168.x.x IPs. So I can make sure that if I connect to 10.0.0.2, it will go over the 100mbit connection (my pee cee doesn't have gigabit) rather than the wireless network. If both networks have 192.168 IPs, then you might be going over wireless rather than wired. Different ranges help remove any ambiguity.
 

toru173

macrumors 6502
Apr 5, 2007
318
137
My PC has 4 GbE ports. I only ever use one at a time, but I'm going to a lan on the hols and I plan to use my pootah as an informal router
 

hayduke

macrumors 65816
Mar 8, 2005
1,177
2
is a state of mind.
Sounds like you may be doing something wrong.

As someone said, use a different subnet. For my computer-computer network, I use 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 for the computers. My wireless router hands out 192.168.x.x IPs. So I can make sure that if I connect to 10.0.0.2, it will go over the 100mbit connection (my pee cee doesn't have gigabit) rather than the wireless network. If both networks have 192.168 IPs, then you might be going over wireless rather than wired. Different ranges help remove any ambiguity.

Hey All - Thanks for the replies. I'm using a brand new Cat-6 cable (backwards compatible to Cat5/5e). The cable has a clean run from the Mac Pro to my Powerbook. The wireless network uses 10.0.##.## and the wired network uses 192.168.##.##. I'm not sure where to change that (Airport Admin Utility for wireless, but for wired?), but it seems consistent with the suggestions.

To test the speed I'm simply using scp and large file. Is there a better test?

Other suggestions? Others ways to troubleshoot?
 

NewbieNerd

macrumors 6502a
Sep 22, 2005
512
0
Chicago, IL
Hey All - Thanks for the replies. I'm using a brand new Cat-6 cable (backwards compatible to Cat5/5e). The cable has a clean run from the Mac Pro to my Powerbook. The wireless network uses 10.0.##.## and the wired network uses 192.168.##.##. I'm not sure where to change that (Airport Admin Utility for wireless, but for wired?), but it seems consistent with the suggestions.

To test the speed I'm simply using scp and large file. Is there a better test?

Other suggestions? Others ways to troubleshoot?

Try without using scp (which encrypts/decrypts) the file. Turn the wireless network off, mount the powerbook, and then just either drag a file to the powerbook or cp <filename> /Volumes/<pbook-mount-point>/wherever. The latter won't give you the fancy 0-100% completion bar that scp does nor the speed, but maybe there is an option for that?
 

hayduke

macrumors 65816
Mar 8, 2005
1,177
2
is a state of mind.
Try without using scp (which encrypts/decrypts) the file. Turn the wireless network off, mount the powerbook, and then just either drag a file to the powerbook or cp <filename> /Volumes/<pbook-mount-point>/wherever. The latter won't give you the fancy 0-100% completion bar that scp does nor the speed, but maybe there is an option for that?

The reason I was using scp is that it was faster than Finder! Are there any tools for measuring network speed between two computers?
 
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