10GBe?

[Ifti]

Thinking of picking up a 10GBe switch considering my NAS already carries 10GBe ports.

What’s the likelihood of a 2018/2019 refreshed iMac including a 10GBe port?
Or are options limited to just the iMac Pro?

 

[cwanja]

I doubt you will see it in my opinion. The standard iMac is not meant in a 10GB environment. Much less, I do not know very many places besides a data center that you are seeing that speed.

 

[BurgDog]

If your iMac has a thunderbolt 3 port it should easily do 10G ethernet with a TB3 to 10G ethernet adapter. If your iMac is an iMac Pro, 10G is built in. I didn't bother with a switch to my NAS, just connected my 10G port from my iMac Pro to the 10G port on the NAS as those are the only 10G devices I have. I added a USB-C to 1G ethernet adapter to my iMac and used a 1G ethernet port on my NAS to connect to my main house switch and the outside. Mounted all my shares on the 10G network and see 400MB/s on reads and writes to the NAS now, will likely get more if I stripe more disks.

If you do this, the point to point network needs to be on its own subnet to work. My main network is 192.168.10.0/24 for my house and the 10G network is 192.168.18.0/24 with manually assigned IP addresses for each side in that range. Didn't need a crossover cable as each side figured it out how to work but I did use a cat6 cable for the connection.

Add: I just added another disk to the NAS for a larger stripe and now get 500MB/s on reads and writes. Well worth it.

 

[deconstruct60]

Thinking of picking up a 10GBe switch considering my NAS already carries 10GBe ports.

What’s the likelihood of a 2018/2019 refreshed iMac including a 10GBe port?
Or are options limited to just the iMac Pro?

Other options.

Sonnet recently introduced a $199 TBv3 adapter. https://www.sonnettech.com/product/solo-10g-tb3.html That's less than the options have been via Thunderbolt. ( it isn't a $90 update, but not $300+ either).

Likelihood included in 21.5" iMac is probably quite low. Those are more cost sensitive.

Likelihood included in 27" iMac is probably under 50%. Less cost sensitive but I suspect Apple is putting money into other components (e.g., T2 chip and SSD. ) but doesn't want current prices to rise much.

If Apple kills the HDD options completely ( not just "downshifts" into a 2.5" but SATA completely gone) though then I would put 10GbE a bit over 50% likely. If they are going to push bulk storage out of the machine then faster external connectivity is more useful.

It would be nice if Apple did though. 10GbE is somewhat caught in a 'chicken or egg" mode where the unmanaged switches won't come down further because not enough demand , but the demand is low because the switches won't come down. If just ship out millions more 10GbE systems that should break that cycle. The system cost would probably rise a bit.

2019-2020 it probably will if doesn't this year.
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just connected my 10G port from my iMac Pro to the 10G port on the NAS as those are the only 10G devices I have. I added a USB-C to 1G ethernet adapter to my iMac and used a 1G ethernet port on my NAS to connect to my main house switch and the outside.

That was on one shortcut on the iMac Pro I don't understand. Why there wasn't a second 1GbE port built in. Should have been space. It is largely provisioned by the PCH so not expensive. With only one drive folks are far more likely to hook up to some NAS/SAN for storage. it is useful to keep random, generic Internet traffic off of that so two ports ( one for each function. ).

Perhaps Apple symmetry OCD nixed that. ( If can't be two 10GbE then just have one.)