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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 :)

Mac Pro to another Mac Pro Transfer Speed Help

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Rob Crain

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1. I have two 4,1 Mac Pros with a 4 hard drive raid setup inside each computer which Reads and Writes at about 400 MB/s. I use one computer to Process and Transcode and the other for editing. When I transfer files between the computers with one ethernet cable connected directly from Ethernet Port 1 on each machine I get about 90 MB/s transfer. But when I connect Ethernet Port 2 on the machines with their own cable to my Airport extreme to get internet access I get speeds of about 10 MB/s. Is there a way to prevent the speeds from dropping without having to disconnect the ethernet port which is connected to the Airport extreme each time?




2. I was also wondering what is the fastest way to transfer large video files from one computer to the other. Is there any other method I could use to transfer files between the computers that would yield faster speeds than 90 MB/s?


Thanks!
Rob
 
10GbE is probably easiest and cheapest without a server machine being the middle man. Sonnet makes a card (listed above by Martin) and Solarflare does as well with two ports:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833615007

One in each machine sets you back $600 plus Cat6 cable.

Edit: Patrick where have you seen/read that TB2 cards have been released for Old towers?
 
To the OP. Are you using Gigabyte ethernet, or traditional ethernet ?
Are all your PCIe slots filled?
 
PatrickFaith said:
I thought the asus pci t2 card worked, but just checked and it won't work for a 2009 mac pro for some reason.

[must have been a hackintosh i saw this on]
Click to expand...

There probably aren't any native drivers for it. There are ways to use Windows peripherals in OS X by loading Windows drivers thanks to the work done on Linux for doing just that.
 
To answer #1-- Buy a separate gigabit network switch to offload the network traffic from the airport extreme.
In my experience Apple hub perform very poorly handling network traffic.
If you get a business-class switch ( about $200) you can bond the ethernet ports of your macs for double the throughput.
 
The AirPort is fine as a WiFi access point, but don't use it as your primary switch, as Todd points out. Yes, some enterprise class switches out there will let you bond your ethernet connections for additional throughput. But beware this also takes additional software on your Mac too.

Not sure why connecting the AirPort to your secondary ethernet port would slow down both connections. They are two discrete controllers on the system, so that's somewhat of a puzzle. The interface on the AirPort is 100Mbps, which is why you see the speed drop relative to data flowing through there. But yeah, it should not have any effect on your other port already operating at Gigabit speed. Hmmmm....

Thunderbolt cards do not work in the old Mac Pro. Or in any PC's of this generation. It's not just an issue of drivers. The way Intel has implemented Thunderbolt, there must be specific hardware level support existing in the system. Newer PC motherboards from ASUS and a couple other makers do offer Thunderbolt add-in cards. The reason why they do them as add-in cards instead of just integrating the port is because Thunderbolt isn't all that popular, especially in PC land, and many people would rather have those PCIe lanes in the form of a slot.
 
Thanks everyone for the information. I will run some tests and let you know what I find. Thanks again!

Rob
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Not sure why connecting the AirPort to your secondary ethernet port would slow down both connections. They are two discrete controllers on the system, so that's somewhat of a puzzle.
Click to expand...

It slows down because because the DHCP info coming from the Airport overrides the static IP info he configured on the direct connection.
If he set up static routes in the ARP tables of both machines, he could avoid the slowdown, but I didn't want to go into that level of detail.
 
Todd T said:
It slows down because because the DHCP info coming from the Airport overrides the static IP info he configured on the direct connection.
If he set up static routes in the ARP tables of both machines, he could avoid the slowdown, but I didn't want to go into that level of detail.
Click to expand...
Side question, if the OP will permit ...

I set my thunderbolt to a static IP for local file transfers, but sometimes my slower 1 gig ethernet port that goes up to the router to the internet is where the file transfers are going. How do I make sure the local file transfers always happen on the faster connection on the mp?
 
Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions!

Todd T said:
It slows down because because the DHCP info coming from the Airport overrides the static IP info he configured on the direct connection.
If he set up static routes in the ARP tables of both machines, he could avoid the slowdown, but I didn't want to go into that level of detail.
Click to expand...
Yes, Todd, setting the static IP manually for that ethernet port did fix the problem! Thanks so much.

PatrickFaith,

Your question is welcome in this thread for sure. I am curios as well.

Thanks,
Rob
 
If you want a solution with good support for upgrading those 4,1 Mac's to 10GbE I highly recommend Small Tree. They write the drivers and know how to pull more performance out of the cards.

Just finished networking an old Tower into the newer network (nMP/Thunderbolt/Etc) and with help of Chris over there, it was matter of minutes to see the full bandwidth off the shared Raid. Sadly, Promise was not so helpful.
 
PatrickFaith said:
Side question, if the OP will permit ...

I set my thunderbolt to a static IP for local file transfers, but sometimes my slower 1 gig ethernet port that goes up to the router to the internet is where the file transfers are going. How do I make sure the local file transfers always happen on the faster connection on the mp?
Click to expand...

You can force the connection by only making the static IP a different subnet and leaving DHCP for general traffic.

So if your router DHCP gives your gigabit ethernet 192.168.100.1

Give your manually assigned Thunderbolt connections a different subnet: 192.168.101.1 or even better, something wildly different like 10.1.1.1 and 10.1.1.2

Then when you map a share and want the traffic to go over the Thunderbolt IP you map using the 10.1.1.x IP rather than the machine name.
 
What is the best way you guys perform a share between your computers?

I have been using drag and drop of files using Apple Remote Desktop and that has given me a consistent 100 MB/s roughly. But just seems like too many extra steps to get a transfer going.

If I use the the Sharing > Connect As.. method from the sidebar of the finder window and drag and drop then I get very inconsistent speeds. I can only get as high as 90 MB/s but only for a few seconds then it drops down to 0 for a few seconds and then back up again. Not a consistent speed at all.

Is there a better method of sharing the files?

Thanks!

Rob
 
Rob Crain said:
What is the best way you guys perform a share between your computers?

I have been using drag and drop of files using Apple Remote Desktop and that has given me a consistent 100 MB/s roughly. But just seems like too many extra steps to get a transfer going.

If I use the the Sharing > Connect As.. method from the sidebar of the finder window and drag and drop then I get very inconsistent speeds. I can only get as high as 90 MB/s but only for a few seconds then it drops down to 0 for a few seconds and then back up again. Not a consistent speed at all.

Is there a better method of sharing the files?

Thanks!

Rob
Click to expand...

Turn file sharing on on the desired folder. (Select folder, Get Info, tick Shared box)

In Sys Prefs->Sharing turn on File Sharing.

From Client Mac Finder, Go->Connect to server

Put in smb://IP address of server mac/ <----the STATIC one from my above post.
 
DJ Meyer said:
Turn file sharing on on the desired folder. (Select folder, Get Info, tick Shared box)

In Sys Prefs->Sharing turn on File Sharing.

From Client Mac Finder, Go->Connect to server

Put in smb://IP address of server mac/ <----the STATIC one from my above post.
Click to expand...
!!! Thanks much !!! I'm getting consistent 1.1 gigabyte per second, file transfer speeds now using t2 optical connection between my nmp.
 
If you use multiple network ports on à mac , in systemprefs, network, the order of the interfaces in the list will decide which interface will be used. It tries first witje the active interface on the top. You can also set yourself the service order of you use multiple interfaces, eg set the added 10gbit interface higher in the list than the standard active ethernet. Ip nbr in different zones can also help to force the use of an interface.
 
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