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FireWire Goes Long Distance, Experimentally
P-Rod writes: "PC World.com News has an article detailing how Japanese researchers have created a low-cost way to send information through FireWire cables 100 meters at 400 Mbps. The current form of the Apple-created high-speed peripheral interface (known as the IEEE 1394 industry standard and dubbed i.Link by Sony) is limited to distances of 4.5 meters at that speed, its present top speed, unless a repeater device is used. This could bring new options to computer networking, especially considering FireWire's superb ease of use over Ethernet. "
The current form of the Apple-created high-speed peripheral interface (known as the IEEE 1394 industry standard and dubbed i.Link by Sony) is limited to distances of 4.5 meters at that speed, its present top speed, unless a repeater device is used. Oh fucking wonderful. Would some Japanese researchers care to tell me what I'm meant to do with the container-load of repeaters I just bought? I was gonna raise $6bn to cover the entire United states with a network of repeaters, placed in a grid of 4.5 meter squares. (Hey, they funded Iridium).
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Firewire has a tendancy to be less reliable underwater due to the need for high temperatures and oxygen to maintain transmission quality. Another drawback is production of greenhouse gasses during production. It is also only good for a few uses. More than that, and there is a good chance your signal will get corrupted with 2's and 3's instead of the usual 1's and 0's. I'm sorry for this post.
I found the news of wireless firewire a lot more interesting.
:)
FW is really nice technology if everything falls in line - several meters at 200Mbps wireless, 400Mbps in long range cables and 800Mbps in "short" cabling. Cool..
sulka
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
Well, Firewire in it's current state would not be good for making large networks, as you can only have 63 devices on a single bus (but a firewire switch wouldn't be that hard to invent, I suppose.) Besides that, it's easier, because node addresses and such are handled by the protocol, so no messing with IP addresses and subnets. It also has QoS features, meaning it can deliver broadcast quality video in real-time while saving less important stuff for later.
Err...
Correct me if I'm wrong but I found that 'firewire == better ethernet' satement to be a tad misleading. Ethernet is a system designed for sharing resources and information between a number of computers. Firewire is designed primarily for connecting peripherals to said computers. Also Ethernet now goes upto a gigabit, so it isn't slower.
I would bet that, if you tried to use Firewire instead of ethernet, you would stumble across a lot more problems.
If you wanna get shot of collisions, use token ring or FDDI.
Since the original article was sketchy of details, here's a link to the Japanese group that actually did it.
I know jack about cabling and plastics, but it says that they're using poly-methyl methacrylate wideband plastic optical fiber that's either Graded-Index (100m) or Multi-Layer (50m).
This also piqued my interest: "Perfluorinated POF has been successfully used in trials of 10 Gbps transmission. However, this POF is considered appropriate for office applications because it is only one-fifth the thickness of poly-methyl methacrylate POF. Expectations in the industry have grown for the potential of the easier-to-use poly-methyl methacrylate POF for digital home networks."
Could some engineering type explain all of this?
Good question. Basically, USB is a lot more versatile than SCSI, though there would be some debate over this, I'm sure.
With USB, there is no hardware configuration to be done - you can plug the devices into each other in any order, into the computer or a hub, and you can chain hubs. It's very simple for a user to connect things with USB. SCSI, on the other hand, requires you to set a device ID for each device (usually 0 to 7, I think) and each device in the chain has a priority associated with it, and that is fixed.
The real power of USB is how nice it is from a software driver point of view. If the host OS supports USB (and this would be the difficult part) then writing a device driver is easy. You get a clean software interface, and your driver isn't even loaded until the USB host driver has determined that your device has actually been connected and is receiving power. It's true plug and play (and hot pluggable). The host can even do power management, so even though you might not be able to run your printer and scanner at the same time, the host can power down the one that isn't in use, and allocate that power to the other device, all without you having to worry about it.
Needless to say, the easier it is for the end user, the more difficult it is for us... :)
Also, if you really want to see an amazing technology, check out BlueTooth! Wires of any kind might soon be a thing of the past.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I understand a littany of off-topic posts, but WHAT ?
Suitability of anything over anything else requires a context.
"Staples found to be better than paper clips" - sure, maybe for holding paper together, but not for ejecting Mac floppies.
Firewire is nice for peripherals, but why must people compare it to ethernet? It's made to connect several devices *locally* in a high-speed fashion.
You're all mumbling crap about 63 devices blah blah blah and wondering about addressing schemes.
Is there a limitation that people don't know about regarding Ethernet MAC addresses?
Then, you talk about collisions.
Huh? Properly Vlanned and subnetted switched networks should be in place to deal with collisions.
Fibre Channel? First, it's 100 MBps, not 100mbps. Second, outside of external arrays on expensive-as-shit multiprocessor servers, when do you see it? You don't.
How many of the people complaining about SCSI actually know if it's the bus which is holding them up? Fine... it's nicer to run fiber from one rack to another than to get those damned SCSI cables routed around.
I think that most of the commenters are people who just get hard-ons when you mention fiber.
Firewire, Fast Ethernet, Ethernet, SCSI, Fibre Channel, USB, USB-II... when does it stop? How many devices shall we end up with that can't talk to one another? How many upgrades shall we have simply because we need new interfaces on them?
You know what we need? A cheaper solution. Why should SCSI cables cost so damned much? The adapters to plug your Fast SCSI-II drive into your U2W cable?
Keyword for success and unification is commodity . Which of the abovementioned standards is commodity? Ethernet/Fast Ethernet. RJ45 connectors? Cat5? Commodity.
Yeah, you're right though. Let's make it so there's no way in hell you can get what you need to get the new system on the network at 10 minutes after 8 in the evening. </rant>
-NevDull
I've seen a lot of comments about how FireWire is supposed to replace SCSI or Ethernet or USB. FireWire was meant to replace SCSI, it's not a network like Ethernet. However, it has a couple of advantages over SCSI. True Plug and Play. On a Power Macintosh one can insert a harddisk into the FireWire chain and it'll show up on the desktop, vice versa works as well. Scalability. The original spec is 400 Mbps, the 1394b spec is 800 Mbps and more is on the way. Also, a slower device using 400 Mbps on a 800 Mbps chain will NOT slow the whole bus down, as is the case with USB and SCSI. Easy. FireWire is appearing in all digital camcorders now and will be appearing in a lot more devices. Imagine your DVD player digitally connected up to your amp and a digital TV. These days, one can buy a 1299 dollar iMac with a 799 dollar camcorder and make movies out of the box that are far better than anything out there 4 years ago at any pricelevel below 20,000 dollars. Intel is pushing USB like crazy, but remember that USB needs a host. That's why Intel likes USB so much (and dislikes FireWire) since the PC (with Intel Pentium processor of course) will always be the center of things with USB. With FireWire devices can control each other without the need of a single host controlling devices. Not good for Intel, good for the consumer. Ethernet has it's place in the world, just like USB (slow hub based bus for keyboards and mice). FireWire will find it's own sweetspot. The reason PC users haven't seen it a lot is that Intel is not playing nice here, refusing to implement 1394 in their chipsets. Citing a lack of market for it. I guess Apple needs to create that market for them, just like they did with USB.
OK, I'm not going to give a full technical description here, but:
;-)
... you'll just have to type slower :-)
USB, PS/2, Serial Port, ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) are designed for low speed peripherals such as keyboards, modems or printers. USB does or will rule the roost here.
SCSI, IDE, Firewire are designed for higher speed devices such as hard disks. IDE is very limited (only really any good for internal hard disks), SCSI is (or was) superior to IDE in that it can support up to 7 periperals, longer cables and devices other than hard disks, but has cable termination and multiple version issues. Firewire is being touted as a replacement to SCSI, and will eventually be faster, but SCSI is still the choice for high perfomance if you can put up with its limitations.
Ethernet is designed for connecting computers (and printers) to each other in networks.
There is some overlap - in particular, Intel are pushing USB 2 as something to use instead of firewire. However, USB 2 is still vaporware, will be slower than Firewire, and has a lot of penalties stemming from its design as a relatively low speed protocol. USB 1 is also used for low speed storage like Zip disks.
So the comparison between USB and SCSI doesn't make an awful lot of sense - they are really designed for different things (unless you are talking about something like a Zip disk, in whch case SCSI will be higher performance if available).
Oh, and every computer I have ever bought has had SCSI built in and hasn't been any hassle, so what is buit in depends on what you buy
As for your keyboard, I doubt that Word can keep up with a USB keyboard