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Firewire vs Ethernet networking

R

RussianSoldier

Banned
I'm setting up a fileserver that I'll be using to store virtual cds and compressed archives greater than 4.7gb.

I noticed that XP gives me an option for a firewire network, at a max speed of 400Mbps, alot faster than ethernet.

Will I need any special sort of firewire cable, or software to use a firewire network? Also, what kind of distance limitations am I looking at?
 
you'll never get the full 400mbps bandwidth anyways. never really seen long firewire cables. on the other hand, ethernet cables are really cheap.
 
The specs for IEEE1394 call for 4.5 meter (15 feet) maximum cable length, but the article I linked to used a 5 m cable with no problem. Ethernet cables are cheaper and longer, of course.
 
Originally posted by: dc5
you'll never get the full 400mbps bandwidth anyways. never really seen long firewire cables. on the other hand, ethernet cables are really cheap.
Click to expand...
That is because Firewire (just like USB) is very limited in the length of cable allowed.

For One Shot project of moving Giga Bytes of files between two computers standing side by side it might be worthwhile if it save a lot of time.

As a permanent Network device (for LAN and Internet) Nah! you need to bridge and it is not very stable

:sun:
 
If they're so close together you really should just throw in a few GigE adapaters and run a piece of Cat-5e or Cat-6 between the two machines.

I agree with what dc5 said though, make sure it actually even matters first... If your disk I/O can sustain 50MBytes/sec than firewire would be worth it (assuming you don't want to just do GigE). No idea on whether yours will handle that, but I'd be surprised you have the hardware behind the scenes if you're running XP in front.

Not to mention the sheer number of interrupts all that many packets will cause. If you don't have a bus mastering network adapter (Cat-5 or firewire), you're going to be losing a lot of performance unless you have a pretty beefy system.

That's my 2 ¢ anyway!
 
another vote for just using gigabit ethernet and a crossover cable. Make sure it is a gigabit crossover cable though as they are different than just 10/100 crossovers.
 
If you stick with ethernet, you have all your options, and can add stuff like print servers, the new USB sharing devices that connects to network with ethernet, routers.

go with usb or fw, and you limit your options in the future.
 
I've got a related question to this...kinda. If I ought to start another thread for this, lemme know...

All right, so I already plan on using firewire to connect my PC and my laptop. The distances involved will be very very short b/c it'll be for a college dorm. Moreover, I can't use my own wireless (school would eat me alive if they found out--it's in the rules of internet use or whatnot). And I got the firewire (cardbus card + cable) for cheap from a friend; PC has firewire through an Audigy sound card.

Anyhow, I just tried hooking this thing up...it kind of works. If I keep my home LAN and firewire connections un-bridged on the PC, then the laptop/PC can do file-sharing A-OK (I assigned them separate IPs--192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 for PC/laptop respectively). That's great...this is exactly what I'll be using in college.

However...I'm still at home for 3 more weeks, and I would like to be able to access the rest of my home network & get internet sharing on the laptop. So if I bridge the firewire & home LAN connections on the PC...that happens...sort of. It's just that after about 10 minutes, the internet just dies. File sharing stays alive though. I really don't know what's going on here...nor how to fix it 🙁

There was another thread about a similar problem and the solution was to put the two things (ethernet/firewire) on separate subnets. But I can't figure out how to do that. If the firewire isn't part of the bridge, then that's easy enough...but when it becomes part of the bridge, I can't seem to give it it's own thing...

Edit: Oh btw...if I pull the cardbus card out of the laptop (IBM T42) and put it back in, internet comes back (but only for another 10 minutes).
 
I cannot answer to the 10 minutes. I can tell you that when you bridge you by definition have the same subnet on all connections. You cannot have different subnets.

I have a somewhat similar situation, and my solution is to use Internet sharing on the PC, sharing the Ethernet to the firewire. This will give you Internet access. To share files beyond the PC you will need to use numerical IP addresses, as the Windows Browser will not resolve names for you across the shared Internet connection. If all you have is a single PC and the laptop you should not have a problem.
 
Originally posted by: JesseKnows
I cannot answer to the 10 minutes. I can tell you that when you bridge you by definition have the same subnet on all connections. You cannot have different subnets.

I have a somewhat similar situation, and my solution is to use Internet sharing on the PC, sharing the Ethernet to the firewire. This will give you Internet access. To share files beyond the PC you will need to use numerical IP addresses, as the Windows Browser will not resolve names for you across the shared Internet connection. If all you have is a single PC and the laptop you should not have a problem.
Click to expand...

EDIT: Nevermind, turns out Telephony (and thus ICS) was disabled...I can't remember disabling it, so...yeah. Anyhow, it works 100% now...thanks though 🙂

Btw, I moved my question to a new thread, since I thought this one was dead...here. Same info there though.

But in there, volrath told me to enable Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)...I think that's what you did, right? Thing is, when I try to enable ICS, it gives me an error msg: "An error occured while Internet Connection Sharing was being enabled. Teh dependency service or group failed to start."

So...I don't know what to do with that.

I thought the bridging thing would work fine...but apparently not 🙁 The IP on the laptop (auto-assign) was definitely given from the router (b/c my router assigns on 192.168.200.xxx), but I had no idea as to why the net would cut out after 10 minutes.

The ICS thing sounds like it should work...once I figure out how to enable it that is. D'oh.

-Eric
 
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