Slashdot Mirror
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. "
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