Fortysomething Geek

A few post back, I broke the news about IP Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt bridging. This is a follow-up post. I decided to see if a multi-computer, multi Thunderbolt bridge was possible using just cables.

I finally installed Mavericks on my 27" iMac and decided to do a multiple Thunderbolt bridge tests.
Here is the set-up.




In short, "it WORKS!" It is really plug-n-play. In my initial trial, I assigned IPs. It is not necessary to manually assign IPs.

I connected a 2012 13" MacBook Pro, 2013 15" Macbook Pro Retina, 2012 27" iMac. Both the Retina Macbook and iMac have dual Thunderbolt ports.




The Retina MBP acted as the hub for both the 13" and iMac. Once connected, all the machines can see each other. The 13" with it's single Thunderbolt connected to the 15" could see and access the iMac.


13" Macbook Pro
iMac

15" Retina



The 15" shows both my Thunderbolt ports active


Now for the tests.

On the 13" Macbook Pro, I could ping, mount and connect to my 27" iMac which was connected via the Retina 15".

As I mentioned above, I didn't need to assign any IP addresses. I called the machines up by their host names and IP address. So, for the 13", all I had to do was type in afp://169.254.216.89 or afp://iMac27.local and I was accessing the iMac.

Unfortunately, there is a small penalty loss when you go through another machine.

The first two iPerfs were the 13" connecting to the iMac.
5.24 Gbits/sec and 650 MB/sec.

When accessing the 15" Retina Macbook directly, iPerf jumped up to 7.16 Gbit/sec and 859 MB/sec.



I then pulled one of the cables off from the Macbook Retina and connected it to the iMac's second Thunderbolt port. Voila. It works. However, both the 13" and iMac's IP address re-assigned themselves. This was completely plug-n-play. I did not have to assign routes or anything to get the machines to see one another.

Still, these are impressive numbers no matter how you look at them. Now, this is definite proof a multi-user Thunderbolt IP network is viable.

Someone needs to make a Thunderbolt IP switch, hub, router ASAP! Lastly, Thunderbolt cables are dropping in price. I've gotten a few for under 25ドル-30.

If you just recently installed OSX 10.9, Mavericks, you will be pleasantly surprise to know IP over Thunderbolt (Thunderbolt Ethernet / Bridging) is now supported. This is a pretty big deal for small workgroups that want to transfer "BIG" files over a closed network.

Thunderbolt is rated at 10Gbps. With a 30ドル cable, you are now essentially getting 10Gbe networking for free between two Thunderbolt equipped macs. This is a big deal. How big of a deal is this? 10Gbe networking isn't cheap. Gigabit ethernet has a max theoretical 125 Mb/s limit with real world 100-109 Mb/s.

When you first launch your networking preference, you will notice that the OS now adds a new network port. Thunderbolt Ethernet, bridging, networking. In other words, IP over Thunderbolt is now a reality.



Now, all you need to do is create a closed network.
I chosen 192.168.2.0/255.255.0.0. One will need to be the master and the other the slace.
My 15" Macbook Retina (192.168.2.2) as the master and my 2012 13" Macbook Pro as the slave (192.168.2.3).

With file-sharing on, I can access either via their Thunderbolt IP.




Then I did some copies and benchmarks.

AMAZINGLY FAST. See for yourself.

This is over the network. The 15" Macbook accessing the SSD of the 13" Macbook Pro over the network.



Real world copies. 15 large MP4 movies totalling 45GB in less than 5 minutes over AFP.





For you UNIX networking nerds, I ran iperf




Thats right, 760 plus MB/sec. Networking is only limited to the reads and writes of the drive now.

This is a game changer. The set-up.



UPDATE:
You can read up on multiple mac bridging here.