• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

firewire networking?

C

crazychicken

Platinum Member
i have heard that winXP can do some sort of "firewire to IP" conversion that lets you send data easily at 400mb/s. Question is, if both computers are going to a ethernet hub out to the campus network, can i have them sending over the "firewire network" at the same time? i understand the broadcast range is only 15', but thats not a problem as they are right next to each other

please lmk any infoz

thanks
david
 
Yes, but you'll need to access each system by the IP assigned to the firewire connection. Easiest is to set each machine to an address in one of the private address ranges (I usually use 10.0.0.x). Don't set a default gateway, this way all of your 'normal' traffic will still route out your ethernet connection.

Bill
 
what bsobel said. I had them hooked up but couldn't get them to use the firewire network withouth unplugging from the ethernet switch. Finally had one of those "doh!" moments and mapped drives using the IP address (10.0.0.x) instead of the computer name and now all my local traffic between machines is firewire.
 
If more college roommates/suitemates did this it would relieve a lot of congestion on networks. Rather interesting.
 
Are there any ways to hook up more than 2 computers using this method? This would be great for LAN parties as you could run games off of ethernet , but make your firends connect to a file server with firewire to download any files off it. Are their firewire switches or hubs available somewhere? If you have a 3 port firewire card, could 3 other computers connect to it directly, and if so, how would that work?
 
I played around with 1394 networking between my PC (with a 3+1 port firewire card) and my Shuttle SS51 which has 2 firewire ports on it. I simply gave each an internal IP in Windows XP and plugged a firewire cable between 2 random ports on the machines. Since firewire was made to allow devices to be daisy chained and since I randomly picked 2 ports and plugged the cable between them (and it worked), I'd imagine that as long as each machine (except for the ends) had a minimum of 2 1394 ports each, you would be able to daisy chain a bunch of machines together in this fashion. Of course if one crashes then the network might go down kind of like in the old thinnet days. 🙂

I didn't do much testing but I did notice higher CPU utilization when transferring files via the firewire network than via normal ethernet...

This is all just a guess but since no one else seems to be posting any solid info I figure that this'll keep the thread going a little longer. 🙂
 
I've messed around with FireWire networking, but I had terrible transfer rates. It'd go anywhere between 5-7MB/sec...definitely not the 'advertised' 400Mbps, which should achieve ~50MB/sec, but that's all theoretical, I know. I would have guessed it should have been higher, but who knows. Has anyone got some serious throughput on this technology?
 
I connected my Laptop (XP home) and my home PC (XP Pro) I transferred about 5GB from PC to Laptop, did not take that long.

I tried to transfer the same amount from PC to PC (XP pro / ME) over 100mbps Ethernet, took a long time!

Sorry I didn't meter the bandwidth

I just found this

<-- Use as a 1394/FireWire Networking Hub and connect up to six PCs or Macs! -->

http://www.firewire-1394.com/Pyro-1394-hub.htm

In this case, you would need a pc to share the internet connection.
 
Originally posted by: jamesbond007
I've messed around with FireWire networking, but I had terrible transfer rates. It'd go anywhere between 5-7MB/sec...definitely not the 'advertised' 400Mbps, which should achieve ~50MB/sec, but that's all theoretical, I know. I would have guessed it should have been higher, but who knows. Has anyone got some serious throughput on this technology?
Click to expand...
Hmmm... I just tried this with my Apple iBook and my Windows XP desktop.

I was getting up to 4.7 MB/s = 37 Mbps. I would have hoped for at least over 100 Mbps. 🙁 Is this what other people are getting?
 
I tried it with my A7V333's onboard FireWire controller to my laptop's firewire..this time no Audigy. Same speeds! Argh!

It has been touted over and over how much more developed FireWire technology is over the USB 2.0 spec, but c'mon. This is pathetic! At this rate, I could sell tin cans connected with string that hook up to your PC and advertise a 5ms ping to every server in the country....How exactly do people get this '400Mbps throughput' as a number anyways if it's really so much slower? Is it a Windows XP thing? Eug, could you try a Mac to Mac FireWire network setup and report back the throughput you get?

Anyone else have any updates? Perhaps USB 2.0 networking?
 
Originally posted by: jamesbond007
I tried it with my A7V333's onboard FireWire controller to my laptop's firewire..this time no Audigy. Same speeds! Argh!

It has been touted over and over how much more developed FireWire technology is over the USB 2.0 spec, but c'mon. This is pathetic! At this rate, I could sell tin cans connected with string that hook up to your PC and advertise a 5ms ping to every server in the country....How exactly do people get this '400Mbps throughput' as a number anyways if it's really so much slower? Is it a Windows XP thing? Eug, could you try a Mac to Mac FireWire network setup and report back the throughput you get?

Anyone else have any updates? Perhaps USB 2.0 networking?
Click to expand...
I only have one Mac, so I can't do the test. But see below.

I can get well into the 30's MB/s (> 250 MBps) with my Firewire hard drive. And I think the reason it's limited to that speed is because of the Oxford 911 chipset, not necessarily Firewire per se. In any case I don't think the slow network speeds are a limitation of Firewire per se, but of the implementation.

In addition, at least one guy is saying he's getting in the 90 Mbps range with Mac to Mac transfers. That's not too bad, and is at least faster than 100BaseT and faster than what you're getting on PC to PC transfers. Note also that Apple has not yet released official drivers. My testing has been with betas.

So lets not give up yet. 😛
 
XP has some thing where you can 'bridge' two connections. Like heres my setup:

My computer is the internet server. I connect to the internet through USB DSL modem, then I have my LAN going to an ethernet hub. All other computers are on the hub, and look to me for Internet connection. I have a Firewire port on my Audigy, and what I did was bridge my LAN connection with my FIREWIRE connection.

So would this mean that if another computer were to connect into my FIREWIRE port, would they show up in the workgroup on the LAN connection? and then could they access the internet through me in the same manner that the LAN users do?


I have yet to try out the firewire thingie, i will when i have a friend over for a LAN game. my dads new pc doesnt have a firewire port so i cant test it just yet.
 
Originally posted by: jamesbond007
I tried it with my A7V333's onboard FireWire controller to my laptop's firewire..this time no Audigy. Same speeds! Argh!

It has been touted over and over how much more developed FireWire technology is over the USB 2.0 spec, but c'mon. This is pathetic! At this rate, I could sell tin cans connected with string that hook up to your PC and advertise a 5ms ping to every server in the country....How exactly do people get this '400Mbps throughput' as a number anyways if it's really so much slower? Is it a Windows XP thing? Eug, could you try a Mac to Mac FireWire network setup and report back the throughput you get?

Anyone else have any updates? Perhaps USB 2.0 networking?
Click to expand...

I honestly think the problem is the rest of our hardware. No harddrive touts a 400 mbps throughput. Furthermore no PCI bus touts that either. Ponder that.
 
Originally posted by: Oaf357
Originally posted by: jamesbond007
I tried it with my A7V333's onboard FireWire controller to my laptop's firewire..this time no Audigy. Same speeds! Argh!

It has been touted over and over how much more developed FireWire technology is over the USB 2.0 spec, but c'mon. This is pathetic! At this rate, I could sell tin cans connected with string that hook up to your PC and advertise a 5ms ping to every server in the country....How exactly do people get this '400Mbps throughput' as a number anyways if it's really so much slower? Is it a Windows XP thing? Eug, could you try a Mac to Mac FireWire network setup and report back the throughput you get?

Anyone else have any updates? Perhaps USB 2.0 networking?
Click to expand...

I honestly think the problem is the rest of our hardware. No harddrive touts a 400 mbps throughput. Furthermore no PCI bus touts that either. Ponder that.
Click to expand...

My Seagate Ultra320 15K.3 15,000RPM drive can do more than 50MB/sec write. My PCI bus, 66MHz, 64bit can do more than 400Mbps. It is not my hardware. 400Mbps is only 50MB/sec. Even my friend's RAID setup can surpass 50MB/sec.

Ponder that. 😀
 
400mbps bus bandwidth doesn't mean one device can saturate it. Just like your single cheetah drive can't fill the 320MB/sec scsi bus, but 15 of them definitely would.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top