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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Longer Optical Thunderbolt 3 cables?

Corning and Tsumitomo have announced... Nothing for sale yet. They might be waiting for licensing to open up on the encoder/decoder unit production so they can use suppliers other than Intel, or make themselves. That happens early next year.
 
As the long tb 2 cables for corning and the others did not really ever work reliably I can only imagen TB3 cables being exactly that much more difficult.
 
Björn Benckert said:
As the long tb 2 cables for corning and the others did not really ever work reliably I can only imagen TB3 cables being exactly that much more difficult.
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And there’s that too. I have a few of the 35’ Corning optical TB2 cables that no longer work and their warranty was always a joke. Took weeks of screwing with them over the phone to get one cable replaced only to receive a white box (refurbished?) one that was DOA. I’d say of the ones I’ve owned, failure rate was around 40%. B&H would swap them at first, but they knew the warranty was a lie and probably couldn’t get replacement product themselves, so they quit taking returns and exchanges on the Corning cables (even if it was DOA).

I don’t necessarily blame Corning on the quality of the cables. It was the encoders that would fail 90% of the time and Intel was the sole manufacturer/ supplier.
 
We've set up a semi-workaround, 2m Cablematters 40GB/s (Amazon) cable daisy chained through docks. Expensive, but not as expensive as those old Corning opticals.

Side note – I guess we've had better luck. So far all 3 of our optical TB2 cables are still running fine several years in. Cross your fingers I didn't just jinx us ;)
 
An announcement at CES is likely, to go with the new royalty-free status. That is the only big "center stage" show where Intel will be doing it's usual dog and pony (and donkey) show for Thunderbolt and Corning, Sumitomo, and other TB licensees will also be present, to showcase their current (or upcoming) offerings in display cases and booths. After that, we'll probably see actual working product demos at NAB and IBC, which are the go-to showcases for available/upcoming products.
 
Have not seen any update or good soultion.
We simply centeralized all our computers and then we run 8m hdmi2.0 cables and usb3, both with amplifiers to our 4k screens that got a one in 4 out usb hub.

That all works well except for the osx / hackintoch machines that can not run 60hz over those hdmi connections. So for those we also have display port to hdmi2 dongles which actually trick osx to do 60hz 4k to hdmi2.

But I dont see any long rb3 cables any tine soon. Hope 40GBe network will be comming big at reasonable prices soon.

As the whole deal with apple trying to stuff computers into screens is a bit anoying when having multiple machines with centeralized storage. Not really so that everyone can sit 2 meters away from the machineroom.
 
TB, or not TB

TB, or not TB

A couple of years back I was seeing 100 meter optical TB cables at NAB, etc and hearing about network protocols compatible with TB infrastructure. In the back of my mind I started thinking about what a great solution that could be in a year or two. Then we got TB3 chipsets, and a shared plug standard with USB-C, and Intel was still talking about networking... What is the current real world status? None of the facilities I deal with have it yet.

IAC, without robust optical fiber interconnects at semi-reasonable prices the number of facilities that abandon 10gE for TB2/3 based solutions will hit some headwinds. Without a certain market size, the cost of nurturing a new network infrastructure through its early adaptation process could be a tough ROI - particularly in the short term, which can be crucial at public companies despite the obvious long term potential.

OTOH, optical fiber TB3 cables up to 100 meters that are both reliable and affordable could dramatically increase the number of sites for which Thunderbolt networking would be a smart upgrade. Tipping point and all that...

Cheers - #19
 
I keep dreaming of the day I can easily put my tower and drive bays into another room and just run one long Thunderbolt cable to my monitor with USB hub attached.
 
Misha Engel said:
That is possible, just not over Thunderbolt.
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Yeah I know you can run USB extenders and long HDMI/Displayport, but I've found USB solutions over 15ft tend to crap out over time.
There are ways, but none are as simple nor elegant as one 50-100ft TB3 cable would be.
 
Jarek Zabczynski said:
Yeah I know you can run USB extenders and long HDMI/Displayport, but I've found USB solutions over 15ft tend to crap out over time.
There are ways, but none are as simple nor elegant as one 50-100ft TB3 cable would be.
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This looks elegant and simple enough for me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Gigabit_Ethernet

We use the (redundant) 40 G over fibre for our backup server (250 meters in a different building on the same compound).
 
Misha Engel said:
This looks elegant and simple enough for me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Gigabit_Ethernet

We use the (redundant) 40 G over fibre for our backup server (250 meters in a different building on the same compound).
Click to expand...

Simple if you have the cash to make that happen. Also Fibre is only good for connecting to your storage or other systems. Not so much for getting rid of the system in the room entirely.
 
Jarek Zabczynski said:
Simple if you have the cash to make that happen. Also Fibre is only good for connecting to your storage or other systems. Not so much for getting rid of the system in the room entirely.
Click to expand...

2x 10 G (link aggregation) over copper upto 100 meter is also pretty fast and not that expensive.
 
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