IP over Firewire Updated

foniksonik writes "Apple released an update to its IP over FireWire software. 'Now the IP over FireWire Preview Release adds support for using the Internet Protocol - commonly known as TCP/IP - over FireWire. ... Using the existing Network Preferences Pane, users can add FireWire as their IP network node to connect and communicate between two machines. ... In all cases, Rendezvous can be used if desired for configuration, name resolution, and discovery.'" Now it is time for YA debate on FireWire vs. Ethernet. Let the festivities commence!

Comments

some info.

[sirfunk]

this page, has plenty of info on tcp/ip over firewire.. w/ a quick read looks like length is the biggest problem, 2nd to no implimentation supporting more then 2 devices.

old hat

[g4dget]

The eth1394 driver has been in the Linux kernel for a while. You can find a discussion of using IEEE 1394 for compute clusters here. And, you can do the same with both USB 1 and USB 2.

Generally, Gigabit Ethernet is more flexible, easier to maintain, and has more third party hardware available for it, but if you have a motherboard with FW and are setting up a special-purpose, low-cost cluster, IEEE1394 or USB2 networking may be a reasonable choice.

Re:Gigabit ethernet versus firewire

[Duck_Taffy]

Gigabit isn't standard on most macs. It's standard on most pro model macs - the towers, and the 15" and 17" PowerBooks. Not available on the iMacs, eMacs, iBooks, or 12" PowerBook. Those are only available in the 10/100 variety of ethernet. Besides which, the first models of 15" PowerBook G4 came in 10/100 only, as well as the first two generations of G4 towers. So yeah, lots of computers currently in use that don't have Gigabit.

The other advantage is that FireWire hubs are much cheaper than Gigabit Ethernet switches.

Re:Gigabit ethernet versus firewire

[Gropo]

OS X features Multilink Multihoming, which allows multiple concurrent interfaces to IP ports. Conceivably, if you wished to cluster two Macs you could use 1394b, 802.11g and 1000BaseT (and even the 56k modems, I guess) simultaneously to pass packets to the client machine, thereby alleviating your bandwidth bottleneck by a huge margin.

I wouldn't say "better," I'd say "extends the functionailty of the machine"

Useful when Ethernet is "in use"

[macmastery]

IP over FireWire is most useful when the Ethernet port is in use (such as, on a server). Let's say you have a full-time web server, serving over its ethernet interface. Say you need to upload more content, but you can't take that ethernet port or that server offline. You can upload the content and let the ethernet continue to serve as much as it can. It's handy and you don't need a complex networking solution.

Also, consumer machines can have faster file transfers without shutting one machine down into target disk mode. I think it's supposed to be simple and fast, not scalable and fastEST.

Re:Gigabit ethernet versus firewire

[tupps]

Just for those who are wondering:

Netgear 4 port 10/100/1000 Switch $725 (aussie dollars)

Belkin 4 port Firewire Hub -- $149 (again AUD)

So 4~5 times the price difference

Let's hope this is standard in Panther

[MalleusEBHC]

I'm hoping that they slide IP over FireWire in as a standard feature on Panther. I've been using it since January, and I must say that it is excellent. The speed isn't quite there yet, but it is good enough. By this, I mean that target disk mode still gives noticeably faster transfers, but this feels faster than 100mbps ethernet. (I haven't run numbers, sue me.)

For the people out there questioning "Why?", here goes. For machines with built in ethernet and no PCI slots, this is a godsend. I have my Cube and my TiBook on a little LAN using IP over FireWire and Internet Sharing. Since the Cube's ethernet port is dedicated to the network connection, the only other way I would have been able to do this would be AirPort, and this obviously blows that away for bandwidth. With AirPort, large file transfers would take forever, and I probably couldn't max out my connection. (Gotta love college hookups!)

This is just one of the many reasons why I love Apple so much. For all the things in OS X that get big press, there are so many little treasures such as IP over FireWire. Even for a preview release, it's pretty damn well polished. (Disclaimer: Many have complained that is has trashed prefs on install, but in two installs and two upgrades I've never had this problem.) Keep up the good work Apple, and make this a part of the standard install ASAP.

A future use for FW800, poor performance with IP

[pillar]

Something that cluster guys may want to think about is the use of Firewire 800 as a cluster media (like a control net) for a group of n xserves (or any other mac). This would be an alternative (since the FW800 is already there) buying a load of Cisco 4000 or 6500 switches to run the control net. I'm actually not sure how many nodes it can handle, but I assume it would be enough to run a small to medium mac cluster. Along those same lines, when testing the performance of FW400 between nodes using iperf ( http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/ ) which will test raw throughput and give very good results, FW400 performance was very poor. The GigE was pretty good (unfortunately I do not have the numbers in front ot me) but if I'm not mistaken, FW400 was a bit better than 100mb E and the GigE was pushing over 800mb UDP back to back with another MAC. Performance was degraded when adding a GigE switch between the 2 macs (due to backplane).

Re:question about this. Can I use this instead of

[papasui]

If your G4 has a internet connection you should enable internet connection sharing and then you will be able to use NAT (Network Address Translation) to access the net. Essentially your G4 becomes the network gateway/router and it will pass through your requests.