Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
So how is this better than gigabit ethernet which is standard on most macs?
Is it just another way of communicating that perhaps allows one to avoid a congested/insecure ethernet backbone when connecting two neigboring macs?
what's the big deal?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
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.
I think it is a suppliment for ethernet.
For instance, by roommate has a laptop and a desktop but only one ethernet port, so he uses IP over Firewire to have both computers on the internet.
It is also useful if you need to connect two computers but you are already using the ethernet jack on one of them.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
Firewire cable to connect the two machines: $little
Hub or switch that can support the same speeds: $fuckloads
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.
I've been toying around with the new IP over Firewire and noticed something quite interesting. I've got my iBook connected to the second fw400 port on my DP1.25ghz fw800 MDD powermac. The first fw400 port on my powermac is used by my 30gig iPod. I installed the new release on both machines and when I had rebooted my iPod showed up on both my iBook and my Powermac. I don't know if this was Rendezvous, which I know is now implemented on the new release. I can see how this could be quite useful in a setting where an external Firewire device, say a DVD burner or HardDisk, could be easily shared between two computers.
"Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity."
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).
nb
Ok, so it's not as fast as gigE but it makes one hell of a redundant system to daisychain round a few nodes. As a previous poster said, it will also take some bottleneck strain. There's the possibility of using it for LAN parties without half the hardware cost (if indeed it can be daisychained - and I can't see why not)The quicker this gets fully implemented, the better.
The only weird thing I can't figure out yet is how it mounts that other disk. All files are owned by the admin owner and you can't chown anything on the target macs disk, therefore if I backup /Users to it with "rsync -a", it requires later booting up the destination mac and "chown -R" each user's home dir. There must be a mount option somewhere to deal with this...
IP FireWire. Sounds like you need some antibiotics. (Ba-doom ching!)
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
IP Over Firewire has been really useful for me in a couple of situations -- most notably when I've needed to run backups of my main Macs. For day-to-day use, I stick to 10/100 though -- it's cheaper to implement, and I can crimp my own cables on a whim.
I've got a Shuttle barebones based Wintel system with built-in firewire and a pair of massive drives that I use for a rendering station/backup server -- and let me tell you -- backing up 130 gigs worth of DV footage/uncompressed TIFFs (insert pr0n joke here) over Firewire is one hell of a lot quicker than waiting for the same over 100mbps Ethernet. XP is slightly flaky when it comes to IP over firewire (no, i *don't* want those connections bridged!) but once you get it running it's a little more stable than your average house of cards.
I know a lot of photographers who swear by Target Disk mode as well -- they carry their powerbooks as preview stations and Big Honkin Memory Cards (using Firewire-connected pro cameras) and once they get back to their main machine to retouch, they just go into target mode and stuff dumps *fast*. Now if only I could get a kodak camera back to interface with my iPod......
All things being equal, I've been tempted to convert everything I've got over to firewire from the stock ethernet jacks -- but I honestly have better uses for a firewire port most of the time (DVD-R, DVcam, DVDeck, DV-to-component box, iPod), and I really prefer to rely on my router for connection sharing instead of the Mac.
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.