
Inside Apple's Thunderbolt to Ethernet Adapter - tambourine_man
http://www.hardmac.com/news/2012/06/21/inside-apple-s-thunderbolt-to-ethernet-adapter
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evoxed
Unfortunately I think it'll take until MacBooks and iPads are literally as
thin as paper (edit: hyperbole) before Japan becomes truly wifi friendly...
'til then, I'll appreciate my current MacBook and not having to carry around
that dongle everywhere.

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rangibaby
There is plenty of semi-public Wifi in Japan. You're ostensibly meant to pay
into a seperate contract, but anyone who buys an iPad gets a password to use
Softbank hotspots, good for two years[1].

[http://store.apple.com/jp/buy/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad/new...](http://store.apple.com/jp/buy/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad/new_ipad?product=MC705J/A&step=accessories)

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spicyj
I wonder if it's possible to use this as a PCIe-to-Thunderbolt adapter – as
far as I can tell, all existing packaged products are at least $500.

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iridium
Is it the angle of the photo - or did he just melt the pcb in Photo#4 in order
to wipe out the A and figure out what chip it was?

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pieter
So how does this work? Shouldn't it have a Thunderbolt controller on there
somewhere too?

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potkor
Maybe the thunderbolt cable is short and well-shielded enough that they can
just run plain pci express over it.

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kika
thunderbolt IS the PCI express bus (plus Displayport)

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potkor
It carries the pcie protocol but pretty obiously it's not electrically
identical to pci express (external cables and connectors don't generally
provide as good signal integrity as required by pcie that is happening on your
motherboard).

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gcb
So, there's no space in a mac for a ethernet port?

what's the advantage or serializing a pci-e bus into some 4 or so pins? They
must be certain that ethernet port is a thing of the past.

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andreasklinger
Don't you think it is? I can't remember the lasttime i used an eth cable
(apart of testing the network/router)

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X-Istence
Those of us who work in classified locations or on classified projects are not
allowed to use wireless. Also, since when have we been able to push 1000 Mbps
over Wireless?

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codeka
I'd say that particular use case is rather uncommon.

It's not that wired ethernet is _never_ required, just that wireless is
perfectly acceptable for the vast majority of users.

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reitzensteinm
And in the cases that it's not, having to use a $30 dongle on a $2200 machine
is just not a big deal.

As an aside, if an office is paranoid enough to lock down well encrypted Wifi,
I wouldn't be surprised if Thunderbolt got the boot as well.

It's built like Firewire; devices that are plugged in have direct access to
the host machine's memory. Though at least it now has the ability to mask off
sections of memory.

An attack via a malicious network adapter doesn't sound out of the question.
Seems like it would be on the same level of plausibility as sniffing WPA2
traffic and decrypting meaningful information from it.

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X-Istence
Thunderbolt requires physical access to the machine. Wireless can leak and
potentially be available outside of the building. That it is the biggest
concern with Wifi.

Is there a likely hood of WPA2 AES being cracked? Yes, it is very small but it
is still possible. Also if a secure device is captured by an attacker and they
steal the credentials to access the wireless network they can now come and go
as they please. At least with physical they would have to enter the building
and plug in.

Are other attacks feasible, absolutely and I will grant that, but having wifi
enabled just doesn't work for certain situations and where paranoia runs high
due to the work that is being done.

