14 DAY TRIAL // Gigabit Ethernet is considered a very fast networking standard, but Intel has just added networking support to the Thunderbolt 2 technology, making Ethernet seem old and slow.
Thunderbolt 2 was launched about a year ago, enabling 20 Gbps transfers instead of the 10 Gbps previously available.
Now, a new version of the technology allows you to use a TB cable to connect to PCs, or a PC to a Mac system and vice versa.
You can easily play 4K video or edit it over that connection. And it's not just PCs and Macs that can work together now.
According to the company, laptops like the HP ZBook 15, the LG Thunderbolt 2 monitor, LaCie Little Big Disk 2, and the Promise Pegasus2 M4 storage devices can communicate over TB 2 as well. The Apple Mac Pro computer is on that list as well, as is the 34-inch IPS 21:9 UltraWide monitor (Model UM95).
Now we can only sit back and wonder if Thunderbolt Networking will take on a life of its own and somehow start to challenge standard LAN setups.
There aren't any switches and routers that can divide an Internet connection between devices using TB instead of LAN, but Intel would probably have no trouble starting a line of products that do just that.