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Looking to connect 4 Macs to a central Mac Mini that is running as a server (with a few Thunderbolt RAID arrays connected it as data sources).

Network is currently gigabit ethernet, but would like to speed up data transfers. 10G Thunderbolt Ethernet Adapters are still relatively expensive ($300-500) - so I'm wondering if its possible to connect multiple Macs via IP over Thunderbolt?

Apple supports a direct connection between two computers via IP, but is it possible to connect multiple either via daisy chaining them or via some sort of a Thunderbolt hub or switch (if one exists)?

If so, this would make for a relatively inexpensive way to build a 10G LAN network with (mostly) existing hardware and a few Optical Thunderbolt Cables

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Theoretically, yes you can do this. You would need a Mac with multiple Thunderbolt ports like a 2013 MacPro with its 6 Thunderbolt ports. Not sure if daisy chaining multiple Macs together will give you the desired effect.

This link seems to think that it will work but says nothing about daisy chaining only plugging a bunch of Macs into one Mac with a lot of ports.

So it seems that it is safe to plug a bunch of Macs together VIA thunderbolt which opens the door to you experimenting with various topologies to find one that does what you want.

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Connecting multiple Macs with Thunderbolt interfaces via a daisy chain "ring" topology does work. However, the further nodes are from each other on the daisy chain / ring the greater the latency. In my personal experience with TB2 and the late 2013 Mac Pro, the latency between directly connected devices is about a quarter to a third of a millisecond. I have not exhaustively tested bandwidth limitations. While TB2 can achieve 20 Gb/s (in theory), it does so by bonding two 10 Gb/s channels. It's unclear (to me) whether the TCP/IP networking stack running over Thunderbolt can bond channels together to achieve this higher level of bandwidth. It may be limited to one channel of 10 Gb/s as a theoretical maximum with actual bandwidth achieved being something less (like 5 - 7 Gb/s) due to overhead with the Thunderbolt and TCP/IP protocols. But, it is definitely capable of latency 1/10th that of Gigabit Ethernet and bandwidth about ten times greater than Gigabit Ethernet.

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