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Q: Thunderbolt Internet Sharing issues

Hey all,

 

I'm having some really strange issues with Internet Sharing over Thunderbolt.

 

The Setup:

 

Hardware:

2013 iMac

2013 Macbook Air

Apple Thunderbolt Cable 2.0

 

Connections:

---[Ethernet]---> iMac ---[Thunderbolt]---> Macbook Air

 

Ethernet is setup through DHCP on my company's network. We have two specific DNS servers our system connects to, and a few Search Domains for our intranet services.

 

I have Internet Sharing setup in the Sharing prefpane to share my Ethernet connect over Thunderbolt. I am also using the Thunderbolt cable to use Target Display mode so I can use my iMac as an external display.

 

On the iMac: Thunderbolt (not setup as a bridge) has a manual IP configuration of 192.168.2.1 (since it's serving as the router).

 

On the Macbook Air: Thunderbolt is configured manually with:

192.168.2.10     IP Address

255.255.255.0   Subnet Mask

192.168.2.1       Router

 

 

Problems (on the Macbook Air):

 

  • All of Google's services (search, Gmail, Maps, Music, etc.) or anything with Google DNS is extremely slow. Pressing 'Enter' on a Google search takes 5-10 seconds for results to show up, but all other sites are wicked-fast. This does NOT happen in the iMac, just the Macbook Air.
  • Anything involving an upload (comitting to an SVN repository, uploading an image to a website, sending information to a website, copying files to a File Share, etc.) is extremely slow (5-10 KBps). This is not the case with the iMac providing the connection.
  • Every single time I come in in the morning and connect my Macbook Air to my iMac, I have to remove the Thunderbolt network interfaces from the Network prefpane, and readd them because reconnecting the Thunderbolt cable again does not provide a connection, even though it's configured and Internet Sharing is turned on. Sometimes I have to restart both of my systems to get them to connect again. This is maddening. It should just work, like an Ethernet cable does.

 

Any thoughts or suggestions? Do I need to change my IP configuration for the Thunderbolt connections? Would it be better to bridge the Ethernet and Thunderbolt connections? If so, how do I still access my company's DNS servers and Search Domains that are originally configured through DHCP on my Ethernet?

 

Thanks a ton! Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Andy

MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on May 1, 2014 1:35 PM

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