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how to prioritize ethernet on thunderbolt display

alecgold

alecgold

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 11, 2007
1,532
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I have a 11" macbook air and have been working a lot of word and excel documents lately. So now my 27" thunderbolt display came in, I'm happy as can be.
But, when I connect my thunderbolt port, how can I prioritize the ethernet connection? It stays connected through my wifi, but if I'm cabling my MBA anyway, I prefer the gigabit ethernet connection (there are well over 70 wifi networks in range around here).

Does anybody have an idea? Google and MRoogle didn't help me on this. :(
 
miles01110 said:
Turn the WiFi off.
Click to expand...

Yeah, done that but it's not that convenient if you often take the MBA away e.g. For a meeting or to a client. You'll keep turning it on/off. And with the MBA not always connecting automatically, it Does become a bit annoying.
 
danpass said:
This is the only method I ever looked into.

There is an order of preference in the System Settings but as far as I can tell it is limited to the order of wi-fi networks that are preferred.
Click to expand...

Looking further into it I see now it may be possible.

I don't have any TB connections and the Air obviously doesn't have an ethernet port so I can't test it but when you open System Preferences -> Network you see the connectivity options down left side.

There is a small gear at the bottom next to the + and - signs and it looks from there you can 'Set Service Order'.

Try it out and let us know :)
 
And it does work. I get both connected, but it prioritize the ethernet to be connected to the internet. I can see it on the webpage of my modem.
Great!!
For big file transfer ethernet is a bit faster. Especially the gigabitethernet.
Thanks for the hint!!!
 
You can also set the location for when you are docked to the TB display. Locations is located under Network. Just setup the location to only active the Ethernet port on the TB display when the location is set to docked (or whatever name you choose). This is how I have my MBP setup with my Hengedock and it works wonders.
 
I can't seem to figure out how these different locations work. The apple support document is somewhat vague as well as it was written for 10.5 LINK

At the moment it works beautiful, so I'm leaving it as it is.
When I'm in the office, the ethernet of the display is preferred, when I disconnect, the wifi takes over immediately. That's all I asked for :)
 
it's easy actually

go to system preferences>networks and drag the thunderbolt ethernet to the top. The order that the connection types are in is the order in which OSX looks for an internet connection.
 
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