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Firewire or Gigabit Ethernet?

Posted by Cliff on from the why-not-use-both dept.

schvenk asks: "Firewire (IEEE 1394) has been accepted as a standard for peripherals, from hard drives to CD-RW drives to digital video cameras. It's a 400 Mbps technology. At the same time, many machines are shipping with Gigabit Ethernet, a 1000 Mbps equivalent of an more widely accepted standard. I'm not a hardware guy, but at first glance it would seem more efficient to eliminate Firewire altogether and equip peripherals with Ethernet ports, ultimately moving all wired communication to a unified standard. Am I missing something?"

1 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. You mean "FireWire or Fibre Channel," right? by foobar104 · · Score: 3, Flamebait

    Oh, you are going to get so flamed for this. Just comparing FireWire and Gig E in this way means that you must fundamentally misunderstand one or both of them.

    Your life would have been so much easier if you'd just said:

    "I'm not a hardware guy, but at first glance it would seem more efficient to eliminate Firewire altogether and equip peripherals with Fibre Channel ports, ultimately moving all wired communication to a unified standard. Am I missing something?"

    Then we could have an intelligent discussion about crosstalk and carrying power and data on the same cable. As it is, you're just going to get things thrown at you.

    So very close.