Gigabit Ethernet - What's the Deal?

[Cashmonee]

I realise that some people here take this discussion very seriously, but I have to say that there is a refrain here that makes me sort of say "What?".

There is a legion of Apple users whose number one complaint about Apple is dongles. So what do I read here? Post after post saying "don't spend a hundred bucks for 10GE, if it turns out that you want/need it, you can buy a dongle".

Every time I read that, I crack a smile.

Never mind what that particular dongle currently costs.

Sorry, I'm just having a lot of trouble taking a lot of this discussion seriously, and in particular the obsession that some participants clearly have with what they evidently see as saving people from themselves.

I can only speak for myself. People who are researching a mini and what upgrades to get may come here and see this thread, and I think the purpose of a forum is to let people share opinions and give all sides and perspectives. I personally am trying to balance out the professionals and "gotta have every upgrade" people. I completely agree that there are people that need the 10GbE today or will within the lifetime of a 2018 mini. However, that is a tiny percentage of users, and if you are buying this as a home desktop it is highly unlikely that you will need this and you would be better off spending the $100 on a myriad of things besides this.

 

[F-Train]

I can only speak for myself. People who are researching a mini and what upgrades to get may come here and see this thread, and I think the purpose of a forum is to let people share opinions and give all sides and perspectives. I personally am trying to balance out the professionals and "gotta have every upgrade" people. I completely agree that there are people that need the 10GbE today or will within the lifetime of a 2018 mini. However, that is a tiny percentage of users, and if you are buying this as a home desktop it is highly unlikely that you will need this and you would be better off spending the $100 on a myriad of things besides this.

You know, most of the people who are participating in this forum are fairly knowledgeable. The fact is, this thread is unique, in that people who have a problem with 10GE have invoked, as a straw man, a whole class of people who don't even participate in this forum. That has not happened in discussions about i3 vs i5 vs i7, nor in discussions about 8GB vs 16GB vs 32GB vs 64GB. In those discussions, there has been a level of respect that is blatantly absent from a good number of the posts in this thread.

Here's my reaction to the pontificating that has been going on. I've ordered a 10GE mini and I am not interested in some self-appointed expert, about whom I know nothing behind his or her anonymous name, telling me that I'm prima facie an idiot who is being taken in by Apple.

And yes, I think that the repeated statements that one can always buy a dongle, in this case not just a dongle, but a rather pricey one, are hilarious.

 

[Cashmonee]

You know, most of the people who are participating in this forum are fairly knowledgeable. The fact is, this thread is unique, in that people who have a problem with 10GE have invoked, as a straw man, a whole class of people who don't even participate in this forum. That has not happened in discussions about i3 vs i5 vs i7, nor in discussions about 8GB vs 16GB vs 32GB vs 64GB. In those discussions, there has been a level of respect that is blatantly absent from a good number of the posts in this thread.

Here's my reaction to the pontificating that has been going on. I've ordered a 10GE mini and I am not interested in some self-appointed expert, about whom I know nothing behind his or her anonymous name, telling me that I'm prima facie an idiot who is being taken in by Apple.

And yes, I think that the repeated statements that one can always buy a dongle, in this case not just a dongle, but a rather pricey one, are hilarious.

Ah, I get what you are saying, and I hope I have not given the impression that I know a lot about any of this, because I don't. I am simply speaking from my experience and perspective as a relatively average user who happens to be an enthusiast and likes to overbuy my needs.

I do agree that the tone of the thread has gone the wrong direction. I hope I have not added to that.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Again:

The two Thunderbolt controllers in the Mini have a total of 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes available to them. An eGPU uses 4 of them. A TB2 audio interface uses up to another 2, whereas a TB3 audio interface uses up to 4.

If someone is using a fast external NVMe connected to their Mini, that also uses up to 4 PCIe lanes.

Therefore, in any combination of the above scenarios, a 10GbE ethernet adaptor connected to TB3 is not an option because 10GbE needs 2 PCIe 3.0 lanes of its own.

Thus, because the built-in 10GbE option on the Mini does not use any of the eight PCIe lanes available to Thunderbolt, it can be fully utilized even in the above scenario, without taking any bandwidth away from Thunderbolt.

I get all this ^^ above, but if the i3-8100 only has 16 PCIe lanes, how is the built-in 10GbE Ethernet adapter interfacing with the CPU? Surely it has to share two of the PCIe lanes with the TB3 controllers?

 

[theluggage]

What's the deal with the Gigabit Ethernet customization on the new minis?
What's the difference?

All these argumentative answers, and I'm not sure anybody has actually answered your question...

- "Gigabit (1Gb/s) ethernet" is the standard "wired" network connection - this option doesn't directly affect WiFi

- The "10Gb" option is a newer, faster version that is backwards-compatible with 1Gb and, today, is mainly used in pro/server/workstation setups. You won't get any advantage out of it unless you also upgrade your router to 10Gb hardware and have at least one other 10Gb device (such as network-attached storage) for it to to talk to.

- Today, that probably means getting more expensive "pro" routers and NAS boxes (and maybe even replacing the cables if you skimped on them last time). I don't think its inevitable that 10Gbps will start showing up on cheaper, domestic devices any time soon, when the mass-market demand is for WiFi. Plenty of domestic equipment doesn't even support 1Gb ethernet (just the older 100M version) yet.

- The typical home Internet connection is a lot slower than 1Gbps so most people won't see faster internet access.

- If lucky you gets a super-fast 1Gbps Internet connection, you may want/need to have a 10Gbps router but that doesn't mean that your Mac has to be 10Gb if the point of the faster connection was to support more simultaneous devices.

- You can always add 10Gb Ethernet via a Thunderbolt dongle. Yes, it may use up some Thunderbolt bandwidth, but the Mini has that in spades (plus, some people want a second ethernet connector anyway...)

So, basically, if you have to ask, no you don't need the 10Gbps option. If you're thinking of using network-attached storage seriously (i.e. not just your media library and backup on a mass market MyLittleNAS box) then you should probably get it. Or, if you're a pro/enthusiast/power-user spending $$$$ on a new Mac mini, then why not spend another $100 on an extra bit of future-proofing (with no other downside)...?

 

[FX120]

Fortunately, I never said that. I do however easily exceed your aforementioned 2Gb/s even with prosumer Synology RackStations and modern hard drives - we do it constantly in NVR applications.

What sort and how many cameras are you running to get to 2gbps? I think you’re likely over estimating your bandwidth requirement substantially. There is a reason most surveillance specific drives are 5400rpm, NVR applications tend to require low bandwidth but high reliability and longevity.

 

[rmdeluca]

What sort and how many cameras are you running to get to 2gbps? I think you’re likely over estimating your bandwidth requirement substantially. There is a reason most surveillance specific drives are 5400rpm, NVR applications tend to require low bandwidth but high reliability and longevity.

It’s our own proprietary NVR software with unusual storage requirements. I know the numbers are correct because I wrote the software - it has built-in live I/O stats Camera counts are often 30 or more, our largest installation is about 80 into one machine.

 

[Tinmania]

I can't authoritatively comment on "most", but likely in most homes, especially single occupant, 10GbE is still a luxury and accessing your NAS over WiFi is fine.

To put this into perspective, in the US only 25% of people have access to fiber at all. Many that are in that 25% can't get speeds up to 1Gb, let alone higher.


Mike

 

[rmdeluca]

I get all this ^^ above, but if the i3-8100 only has 16 PCIe lanes, how is the built-in 10GbE Ethernet adapter interfacing with the CPU? Surely it has to share two of the PCIe lanes with the TB3 controllers?

All three of the CPUs have 16 PCIe lanes. 8 lanes for TB3 leaves 8 more lanes available on the CPU plus the DMI <-> PCH connection, which is another ~32Gb/s (equivalent to about 4ish lanes of PCIe 3.0).

PCH is connected to USB and usually WiFi, so you have 8 PCIe lanes available for the internal SSD and 10GbE. The T2 is somewhere in that mix but I haven’t bothered to verify where yet. I do see it having a 480Mb/s allocation on the USB subsystem but obviously that’s not carrying the SSD traffic.

 

[Tinmania]

You know, most of the people who are participating in this forum are fairly knowledgeable.

I see you haven't been to PRSI.



Mike

 

[BeatCrazy]

All three of the CPUs have 16 PCIe lanes. 8 lanes for TB3 leaves 8 more lanes available on the CPU plus the DMI <-> PCH connection, which is another ~32Gb/s (equivalent to about 4ish lanes of PCIe 3.0).

PCH is connected to USB and usually WiFi, so you have 8 PCIe lanes available for the internal SSD and 10GbE. The T2 is somewhere in that mix but I haven’t bothered to verify where yet. I do see it having a 480Mb/s allocation on the USB subsystem but obviously that’s not carrying the SSD traffic.

Ah. I misread your post, thinking the TB3 controllers had access to all 16 lanes, which of course doesn't make sense in hindsight. Do you know if the i5-8259U in the MacBook Pros has the same design related to their Titan Ridge controllers?

 

[Ifti]

I have a 10GBe NAS connected to a switch with 8 10GBe ports. Currently I use a Sonnet TB3-10GBe adapter with my MacBook Pro when at my desk.
Hence for someone like me who already has the infrastructure in place, it makes perfect sense.
For someone who does not have this in place it may not be so useful now, but if you're looking to keep the system for a number of years it helps keep options open. Besides, compared to RAM and SSD, this a relatively cheap upgrade.....

 

[rmdeluca]

Ah. I misread your post, thinking the TB3 controllers had access to all 16 lanes, which of course doesn't make sense in hindsight. Do you know if the i5-8259U in the MacBook Pros has the same design related to their Titan Ridge controllers?

I believe the 2018 non-dGPU MBPs have the same 8 PCIe lanes available for the two TB3 controllers, yes.

 

[FX120]

It’s our own proprietary NVR software with unusual storage requirements. I know the numbers are correct because I wrote the software - it has built-in live I/O stats Camera counts are often 30 or more, our largest installation is about 80 into one machine.

Still sounds very odd, what reasons justify the high IO rate with your software? Most NVR or VMS systems I’ve encountered just write the raw compressed camera streams to disk, usually at 2-10mbps per camera. Are you fully decoding the streams and then writing uncompressed video back to disk for some reason?

 

[rmdeluca]

Still sounds very odd, what reasons justify the high IO rate with your software? Most NVR or VMS systems I’ve encountered just write the raw compressed camera streams to disk, usually at 2-10mbps per camera. Are you fully decoding the streams and then writing uncompressed video back to disk for some reason?

Working with lots of MJPEG Not saying it’s efficient, just that we’ve easily pushed 2Gb/s to HDDs with what we’re doing.

It was software written quickly years ago before h.264 became prevalent. Only recently have we finally started transitioning to h.264. There wasn’t really a compelling reason to do it until about a year ago because we were still massively undercutting the major vendors in price for our particular use cases.

 

[pl1984]

And yes, I think that the repeated statements that one can always buy a dongle, in this case not just a dongle, but a rather pricey one, are hilarious.

There's a difference. Here the poster said:

"And if he needs it in the future, he can buy a TB3 -> 10 GBit/s Ethernet adapter. "

Note this is a "If, in the future, you need this functionality it can be added via an adapter" statement. IOW if your needs should change you can add the functionality through an adapter. Contrast this to the anti-adapter argument which is a complaint against requiring an adapter to continue using existing functionality.

 

[Oculus Mentis]

I got the 10GBe option on my Mac mini i7. I already have an HP micoserver Gen8 equipped with the same and I will store my Lightroom catalog and data on that server. iSCSI allows you to use remote raid arrays on the network as if they were direct attached storage (DAS). Basically I will end up with a small storage area network (SAN). I do not need a 10GBe switch because the mini will connect directly to the HP microserver.

 

[rmdeluca]

This is my plan for the new 10GbE NAS I'm building for home office use in the next few months:

* QNAP 6-Bay NAS (TS-673-4G-US)
* QNAP dual M.2 NVMe expansion card (QM2-2P-344)
* QNAP 10GBase-T expansion card (QXG-10G1T)
* 2x Samsung 970 PRO 512GB SSDs
* 3x IronWolf Pro 8TB HDDs (ST8000NE0004)
* Netgear 2x10GbE + 8x1GbE switch (GS110MX)

Total price is currently $2450.

Will be setup RAID-5 (or vendor equivalent) with 1TB of SSD tiered storage/caching. Resulting HDD storage will be ~14.6TB as reported by the OS. With three bays free there's potential to more than double available storage in the future without having to rebuild the array.

Use cases:

* Storage and manipulation of video for YouTube production
* Storage and manipulation of audio for the above (and other things)
* Local duplication of cloud backup solutions for the various PCs, laptops and Linux boxes here
* Time machine for my Mac
* Network storage for sharing files
* Backing up Steam game libraries so we don't have USB/TB3 SSD dongles all over the place
* Steam caching server for LAN parties

If you don't need as much space or such an absurd amount of SSD caching you can get this below $1800. Either way, you'll have multi-user mass storage that will give you > 1GB/s when you need it but still have plenty of room for archiving. One unit, with fault tolerance and hot swappable drives to increase space or replace a dead one.

Overkill for the vast majority of people? Obviously. But for prosumers, professionals and affluent individuals who like the Mini's form factor this $100 port upgrade enables virtually unlimited high speed mass storage while retaining the ability to:

* Record and edit professional audio (TB2/TB3 audio interface)
* Record and edit 4K video (eGPU)
* Play the latest games (eGPU)

Of course, the argument that a few USB Samsung T5s is enough for the vast majority of people (even those who do all of the above) is also true. But now we have better options if we're willing to pay for them.

Thanks Apple!