Article: Firewire Now 12/11/2000
Firewire, Were are we?
Years ago we were promised that Firewire would connect all our Audio Video and Computer
equipment together creating a fast and easily configurable multi-media home network.
The only true success Firewire has had is in the digital video market, but more
success may be on the way. Firewire is quickly infiltrating our lives nobody seems
to know it yet. Windows ME has firewire networking built in, companies like ADS
Tech and SIIG offer a large range of firewire products, and even the Playstation2
has it built in. Most major operating system including Windows98 to Windows 2000,
Macintosh, and Linux offer varying levels of firewire support.
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Linux Firewire
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Firewire for Linux availability and testing is beyond the scope of this document.
There are many efforts to implement Firewire standards including IP over Firewire
on Linux. The following link will provide better information on this than we can. Link
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But what can we DO with firewire and why not just use USB?
Like USB, Firewire connects peripherals together in daisy-chain
and star topologies without the need for termination. It supports hot-plugable devices,
plug and play, and automatic enumeration (no ID’s to set). Unlike USB, Firewire
devices can operate independent of a central ‘controlling’ computer. Each Firewire
device acts like an independent computer system on the Firewire bus that can accept
commands from any other device. Multiple computers can be connected to the same
Firewire bus without the use of crossover cables or special adapters. Most importantly,
Firewire operates at up to 400Mbits per second, over 30 times faster than USB. This
makes Firewire perfect for transferring huge data streams like Digital Video.
Exploring Firewire Now
Three major uses for Firewire are Digial Video (DV), connecting firewire peripherals
like hard drives and scanners, and high speed computer networking. Since Digital
Video resources abound on the web, we will discuss the later two here.
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