WILL THUNDERBOLT SPEEDS CARRY OVER A NETWORK? Picture!

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Hello! This is one of my first times writing on here even though I have been reading this site for years..

My question is if i have Pegasus Raid Thunderbolt drive hooked up to and iMac and then had macbook pro hard wired into the same network as the iMac. Will I be able to see the same speeds on the macbook pro if grab files from the drive? i'm using the promise raid to edit 2k and 4k video.

See digram.


Thank you

 

[robbieduncan]

You may have labelled your Cat 7 Ethernet as 10Gb but is the switch in the Time Capsule Cat 7? No. It's Gigabit. So the clear answer is no.

 

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would a different router be an option?

 

[robbieduncan]

would a different router be an option?

If you get a 10Gb Ethernet switch it might help but at the end it still won't be as fast as Thunderbolt. You are still using TCP/IP rather than native Thunderbolt. The overheads of using a networking protocol from the 1960s will mean that it simply won't be as fast. And that's before taking into account the data has to be turned into packets by the iMac and encapsulated to account for the file sharing protocol sitting on top of TCP/IP (AppleTalk or SAMBA). Basically it's never going to be as fast.

 

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so the only way possibly to get the speed from the thunderbolt raid drive is if i manually plug it into the device each time or buy two?

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oh and the cinema display is the thunderbolt display obvoisuly

 

[danny_w]

Apple lists the ethernet ports on the iMac and TBD as Gigabit only, not 10Gb. How are you going to get 10Gb speed from the ethernet link?

 

[miles01110]

You don't seem to grasp the basic concept that more connections = higher latency. In the end it will hardly matter anyways. Odds are TB speeds on all machines in your network are not mission critical, nor is it likely you'll really notice the difference in the first place.

 

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I guess this won't work. I wish there was to a way to share this device on two computers.

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Would this work..?


See image

 

[miles01110]

No, you will not be able to get the same speeds daisy-chaining Thunderbolt devices as you would with a direct connection.

 

[robbieduncan]

No.

As soon as you have to add a layer of complexity for "sharing" to ensure the two devices don't try and modify the same file at the same time it's going to slow down

Basically if you want ultra-high speed shared storage you need a media optimised SAN which is $$$$$

 

[jtara]

Wouldn't it be great if you could just make-up equipment capabilities and magically it would work!

You can't change a 1gbit/sec network interface into a 10gbit/sec network interface by plugging a cable labeled "CAT7" into it.

 

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[QUOTE
You can't make an Ethernet port appear on a Cinema display by drawing a diagram making it so.[/QUOTE]

Its a thunderbolt display sorry labeled it wrong

 

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Would I still get decent speed with a setup like this? I understand it would be as fast a as direction but will it will be pretty fast?

see image

 

[miles01110]

What is the point of daisy chaining a Thunderbolt drive through an iMac and a TB display to a Macbook Pro? They're all going to have to be in the same room anyways. Just use the iMac or plug in the drive directly.

You are making this 10 times more complicated than it has to be.

 

[robbieduncan]

Would I still get decent speed with a setup like this? I understand it would be as fast a as direction but will it will be pretty fast?

see image

I don't know if it would work at all. I'm not sure if Macs can share drives as "network shares" over a Thunderbolt connection to another Mac.

 

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I'm using both computers to edit. I don't want to have to plug and unplug all the time

 

[thekev]

Would I still get decent speed with a setup like this? I understand it would be as fast a as direction but will it will be pretty fast?

see image

Your setup will slow it down significantly, and you'd have to be careful that you're not working on the same file on both. You'd have to test something like this out to know if it would even work well at all, but damn that's an ugly setup. One Mac Pro and a couple displays would be much nicer, but I get that you're trying to make use of your laptop as you need one anyway.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

First and simplest, test the network-connected performance. For your workflow, it *MIGHT* be sufficient. You could also connect a FireWire 800 cable directly from MacBook Pro to iMac, and have a point-to-point network between the two devices just for video editing, not sharing traffic. Yes, theoretically slower than Gigabit Ethernet, but between the lower overhead of FW vs. Ethernet, and the dedicated nature, it should be fast enough.

Thunderbolt cannot be used as a direct connection between machines. You *CAN* start one of the machines up in "Target Device Mode", where it shares its drives over Thunderbolt, but this wouldn't allow you to use that machine as a workstation, it would solely be acting as a Thunderbolt storage device.

While nobody makes one yet, a Thunderbolt-to-10Gb Ethernet adapter would allow you faster network speeds.

What *IS* made now, and is for your stated usage model probably your best bet, is a Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel adapter. Then you can connect to a standard shared Fibre Channel SAN, instead of trying to share a single Thunderbolt storage device.

Of course, that won't be a cheap setup. ($700 each for the Thunderbolt-to-FC adapter, a few thousand for a simple FC SAN, at least.)

 

[donlab]

Of course, that won't be a cheap setup. ($700 each for the Thunderbolt-to-FC adapter, a few thousand for a simple FC SAN, at least.)

You're forgetting the switch that makes a SAN a SAN.

The key in this is to know that Thunderbolt will not replace networking. Thunderbolt is very much like firewire. It's going to be a local storage bus. It will also be more since it can support peripherals like a PCIE bus.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Keep it simple and get another Thunderbolt Drive for the second iMac, so you could edit at full speed. Place any shared (common) content on the network and copy it to your local drive when needed, and you should be fine.

Or wait a couple years, and you may see something close to what you are looking for according to your drawings. in the meantime, save your money and keep it simple but functional.

 

[Jognt]

Is there a reason you edit on both devices?

Can you use Back to my Mac to share the iMac display with the MacBook?

This way you would have 1 place to edit video blazing-fast using the TB drive, and you can access the editing interface from anywhere using screen sharing.

 

[chrfr]

I don't know if it would work at all. I'm not sure if Macs can share drives as "network shares" over a Thunderbolt connection to another Mac.

No, you can't, so there is no way to get the 10Gb connection through Thunderbolt itself. (aside from using a SAN/Fibre channel type setup.)

 

[ssmed]

My question is if i have Pegasus Raid Thunderbolt drive hooked up to and iMac and then had macbook pro hard wired into the same network as the iMac. Will I be able to see the same speeds on the macbook pro if grab files from the drive? i'm using the promise raid to edit 2k and 4k video.

I have a Pegasus R6 attached to LION server and the drive performance on all the macs attached to the server using Gigabit ethernet is much better than previously with FW800 Raid 5. However I don't know whether it will be good enough for your purposes. I bought the R6 as the cost comparison with a 10GB FW800 was not very different and was pleased that I did.

 

[wafl iron]

It will all get bottlenecked by the 1g ethernet link

The only way to get 10g would be to make a 10g network between your two macs, (and macpro would be the only one that could pull that off, assuming there are 10g nics/hbas that have drivers in lion).