Re: [LAU] Help finding parts for building a hardware system

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 1:17 PM, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd(a)jdboyd.net> wrote: Ethernet probably got it's official start in 1976 with the publication of Metcalfe and Boggs "Ethernet: Distributed Packet-Switching For Local Computer Networks." They'd been working with 2.9M/s networks for several years prior to the publication of the paper.... Since then, speeds have increased, network topologies have changed from a shared carrier to point-to-point, and it has been used for a variety of protocol-and-higher-level work in using it for multimedia or guaranteed data delivery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avionics_Full-Duplex_Switched_Ethernet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_multicast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP-TV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_telephony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_IP Gig-E is a cable running at a given datarate. Obviously, it's controlled circumstances: one uses things like AFDX, QOS, Multicasting or whatever other techniques one has at ones disposal in order to give the needed data capabilities. Given that this is data-transfer that (potentially) people's lives depend on, it's based on solid engineering and not "luck." The concepts, the software, the protocols, etc on this are often decades old, as I stated initially. The point of mentioning "Gig E" as opposed to 10Base-T running over a coax is there's enough bandwidth available that you could easily have general traffic and your "realtime-needing" audio or video on the same cable. Protocols to do this have been around for decades, as I was saying. It is well-understood engineering. You just have to setup the "controlled circumstances" so that you can guarantee a certain amount of bandwidth to your video or audio feeds. How do you think companies with digital phone service share that network with it's general internet access? Or for that matter, on a different kind of network, how do cable providers manage to keep the digital TV signals going uninterrupted while at the same time having bandwidth allocated for home phone service, and home internet service as well? The "pros" have been doing this all along: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MADI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherSound http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES47 http://www.qscaudio.com/products/network/QSys/Q-LAN_WhitePaper_2009-10.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_over_Ethernet Only if financial remuneration is involved, alongside a business plan that involves getting these into people's hands at a reasonable cost. -- Niels http://nielsmayer.com