My situation is that I have a home workspace that is used to support both my work Windows Lenovo laptop (with Thunderbolt) and my private M2 Mac Studio. To easily allow both the laptop and the Studio to utilize external displays, keyboard, speakers, wired network and other items they both connect to the peripherals via Thunderbolt cable and a Plugable Thunderbolt dock model TBT4-UDZ.
Wired network connection is made via the dock and neither the Studio or the Laptop are connected to a wired connection. However, the Studio is also connected to the same network via a Wireless connection.
To switch the workspace back and forth between the two computers is easy, I just switch the dock Thunderbolt connection between devices. I leave the Studio always running. It all works fine except for the network connection.
The problem is that when using the Studio and I am moving large files to a local NAS, I find the Studio is using the wireless connection and not the wired connection.
Switching off the wireless network and rebooting the Studio solves the issue (after a little beach ball bouncing and stumbling) network traffic is back to using the wired network and data transfer rates are as expected again.
Throughout all of this, the Studio has the network Service Order set with the Plugable wired network connection set to the highest priority position.
It is my guess that the cause of the problem is that when I disconnect the Studio from the dock it automatically switches all network traffic to the wireless connection, but it does not switch back to the wired connection when the dock is reconnected.
Thanks for reading this rather long post and thanks to any that can provide a better solution.
Wired network connection is made via the dock and neither the Studio or the Laptop are connected to a wired connection. However, the Studio is also connected to the same network via a Wireless connection.
To switch the workspace back and forth between the two computers is easy, I just switch the dock Thunderbolt connection between devices. I leave the Studio always running. It all works fine except for the network connection.
The problem is that when using the Studio and I am moving large files to a local NAS, I find the Studio is using the wireless connection and not the wired connection.
Switching off the wireless network and rebooting the Studio solves the issue (after a little beach ball bouncing and stumbling) network traffic is back to using the wired network and data transfer rates are as expected again.
Throughout all of this, the Studio has the network Service Order set with the Plugable wired network connection set to the highest priority position.
It is my guess that the cause of the problem is that when I disconnect the Studio from the dock it automatically switches all network traffic to the wireless connection, but it does not switch back to the wired connection when the dock is reconnected.
- The solution of leaving the Studio's wireless connection turned always off disables other MacOS features that I would like to maintain.
- The solution of a second wired network connection straight into the Studio so that it's wired connection is not interrupted, results in the MacOS complaining about two devices with the same name being on network.
- The solution of always turning the Studio off before disconnecting the Dock is possible but a pain.
Thanks for reading this rather long post and thanks to any that can provide a better solution.
Last edited:
