15 Aug
2004
15 Aug
'04
7:51 a.m.
On Sun, 15 Aug 2004, Steve Harris wrote:
But if youre going to do that, why use ethernet?
You'd need dedicated NICs
and switches, so you may as well use firewire, which has dedicated
realtime channels, more bandwidth and doesnt require switching. 400meg
Firewire cards are down to about 7 or 8 euros in the UK now.
about the same as gigabit ethernet nics :-)
but it's much easier to find a 48 port ethernet switch than a 48 port
firewire hub :-)
so topology of ethernet is easier + cheaper for large deployments.
for small cluster of 2-3 PCs firewire may be easier, as long as they're
physically near each other (few meters).
The only disadvantage is that you can't (right
now) cheaply run firewire
over long distances, but taht will change once firewire over CAT5 cards
come down in price, and this is rarely an issue with clusters anyway.
can you do broadcast over firewire? its one obvious usage for ethernet :-)
afaik all firewire transfers are ptp.
btw doesn't gibson have an ethernet protocol?
-Dan