Firewire-to-Firewire networking

[KilrB]

Anyone networking 2 PC's with Firewire? I have a 10/100 Router/Switch for my home network but i'd like to try and take advantage of the 400Mbits/sec transfer rates.

I am thinking about setting up anouther PC for encoding so I don't tie up my main PC for so long. Sending big video files across the ethernet network gets pretty time consuming and i'd rather have a dedicated line for it.

I am just wondering if those dream-world transfer rates are really achievable. When they list in the Specs that 100, 200 and 400 Mbits/sec are supported and then leave it at that, it make me wonder if I could get those kind of transfer rates at all. I have a Firewire card in my PC at the moment for Video transfer from my camera and was just thinking about getting anouther for the new PC.

Thanks

[Jammrock]

Creative Labs uses a 3rd party software app called FireNet from Unibrain that will let two computers network via a firewire connection.

I have not seen a firewire hub that allows you to connect more than two computers together though.

Jammrock

[Pace]

As Jammrock noted, you can't have a firewire hub, but I think you plan to use it for a direct cable link between 2 PCs?

How is your network setup at the moment - do you have 2 x 100Mb cards into 100Mbit switch ports? What kind of speeds do you get from this?

I don't know about Firewire speeds though, just guessing like you.

Otherwise just get a pair of Gigabit cards, I doubt any setup could saturate 125MB/s easily

P.

[DosFreak]

Firewire is 400mb/s on that Creative card. Dunno how the network performs real-world.

[RoGuE]

I did a few tests of Firewire networking a while ago using Windows 2000 & XP's built-in support. I connected my RT2500 to a Sony VAIO's I-Link (200mb/s) port, and copied a few large AVI files over. It was about 40% faster than via my 100mbit switch. So I assume a full 400mb/s 6-pin to 6-pin Firewire connection would be pretty fast, and a lot cheaper than Gigabit ethernet.

[KilrB]

Excellent

Thanks