Thunderbolt Networking?

[mjban]

Is this going to be supported?
I own a Mac Pro and I'm able to create a fast network just using Thunderbolt 2. I currently have my Mac connected to another and I know I can also do it on a PC.
Would love to be able to do it with FreeNAS. This will avoid high costs of buying 10GbE NICs, Thunderbolt PCIe boxes (to connect NICs to Macs via Thunderbolt), etc. If I just want to connect two devices directly.

Other posts found related to this topic dated back to 2014.

 

[dlavigne]

It looks like mrsas(4) already supports it for certain controllers.

 

[anodos]

Is this going to be supported?
I own a Mac Pro and I'm able to create a fast network just using Thunderbolt 2. I currently have my Mac connected to another and I know I can also do it on a PC.
Would love to be able to do it with FreeNAS. This will avoid high costs of buying 10GbE NICs, Thunderbolt PCIe boxes (to connect NICs to Macs via Thunderbolt), etc. If I just want to connect two devices directly.

If I'm parsing that last sentence correctly, it sounds like you don't want a NAS at all. Maybe you should look into thunderbolt jbod enclosures and running zfs on your Mac.

 

[mjban]

If I'm parsing that last sentence correctly, it sounds like you don't want a NAS at all. Maybe you should look into thunderbolt jbod enclosures and running zfs on your Mac.

I do want/need a NAS, been using it for years now, I just want one of my devices to have a faster connection to it and I have a "limitation" on the Mac side where I can't just simply install a 10GbE NIC.

 

[Ericloewe]

This would be up to Intel and their thunderbolt driver, most likely.

 

[cyberjock]

The issue is that there is no thunderbolt driver for FreeBSD. I've heard rumors that it has been asked of Intel to make one. But that's no guarantee of anything. To be honest, if thunderbolt really does take off and become mainstream, I'd expect Intel to write a driver for it. Intel is very friendly to Open Source OSes like FreeBSD. I know that on the "iXsystems side of the house" if Thunderbolt support was added to FreeBSD there would be a desire to make it work for FreeNAS.

 

[Ericloewe]

With Thunderbolt 3 already having more traction than previous versions ever did, it's certainly more likely now than it's been in a long time. They may decide to not support Thunderbolt 1 and 2 controllers, though, so the deck is somewhat stacked against you, OP.

 

[Stanri010]

It would be really nice if Thunderbolt 2 or 3 could be implemented with FreeNAS. It would effectively and easily supersede all configurations where people use 10GBE or 40GBE Ethernet or optical direct connections. Thunderbolt can hold an IP address signal and act as if it's a direct Ethernet connection. High end mainstream are coming with thunderbolt 2 and 3 connections so if we can slap a thunderbolt card into a FreeNAS system, it'd be great without having to spend hundreds on a couple 10GBE cards.

 

[Ericloewe]

easily supersede all configurations where people use 10GBE or 40GBE Ethernet

Not true. 10GbE will also be useful when you want to connect several computers, Thunderbolt won't.

High end mainstream are coming with thunderbolt 2 and 3 connections so if we can slap a thunderbolt card into a FreeNAS system, it'd be great without having to spend hundreds on a couple 10GBE cards.

Yeah, if Intel writes a FreeBSD driver and tools, I'm sure the good people maintaining FreeBSD will include it.