Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Cross-Platform Firewire Networking at Home?

Posted by Cliff on from the Xfers-As-Fast-As-Possible dept.

Stahnke asks "I have two computers that I need to exchange data between. I do music-production on a Windows-based system and have everything else on a Linux system. I need to exchange HUGE amount of data (5GB at a time sometimes) between the two systems as fast as possible while clients are waiting for me. 10/100 Ethernet is too slow, and fiber is just too expensive. Can Linux (2.4) do Firewire networking with a Windows machine? If so, how, and what tools are out there? I have a Firewire card working in Linux, but I haven't had luck with TCP/IP via Firewire yet."

3 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Just One thing to say by spoonist · · Score: 4, Informative

    > Three Words: Firewise Drive

    First, "Firewise Drive" is two words.

    Second, it's "Firewire Drive". That's a good suggestion.

    Third, the poster should investigate gigabit ethernet. Gigabit ethernet can be achieved over copper. Although I believe gigabit ethernet hubs/switches are still awefully expensive. However two inexpensive gigabit ethernet cards can be directly connected (i.e. no hub/switch needed) together with a crossover cable.

    Fourth, if the systems are capable of hot-swapping drives, the poster could plug a drive into the Linux box, load up the data, yank the drive and stick it in the Windoze box.

    Fifth, when writing the data out to a drive initially on the Linux box, use Raid-1 (mirroring) to write to two drives simultaneously. Then yank one drive out of the Linux box and stick it in the Windoze box. No waiting for copying.

  2. Re:Gigabit Ethernet by harakh · · Score: 4, Informative


    Dont even need a crossover on most Gigabit NIC's. Intels Pro/1000 cards all have Auto-detect MDI-X.

  3. answers, by itzdandy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Linux Firewire TCP/IP is possible and their is a kernel patch for 2.4.18 and its built into 2.5.x and will be a feature of 2.6 -BUT-
    this is TCP/IP ONLY!, that means that windows file sharing will not see across this medium, you will have to use IP (//192.x.x.youipwhatever/share) which may not be a problem for you but it's something to consider.

    This does work well, i have a firewire400 link between a windowsXP machine and gentoo linux and it works very well. I use NFS for file sharing as i feel Windows is the "guest" on my network and should pay homage to the exsisting linux machines :)

    i do get very close to optimal speed accross this link for file sharing. i have susstained ~45Megabytes/second transfering large video files. on these same machines with 100 speed networking i get about 9.5Megabytes/second and with gigabit i can get about 35Megabytes/second, but only on large files.

    The firewire link is by far the fastest but i think the gigabit is being help back by immature drivers on the linux side.

    good luck.