Anyone know of a USB2 or Firewire-to-Gigibit Ethernet adapter? My iBook has only 10/100Mbps ethernet. Since the iBook NIC is not upgradable I'd like to get as close to Gigabit as possible.
Anyone know of a USB2 or Firewire-to-Gigibit Ethernet adapter? My iBook has only 10/100Mbps ethernet. Since the iBook NIC is not upgradable I'd like to get as close to Gigabit as possible.
I've never heard of such an adapter. Probably because they couldn't claim it was a gigabit ethernet device since it wouldn't even be possible to reach the full bandwidth using the device.
Anyone know of a USB2 or Firewire-to-Gigibit Ethernet adapter? My iBook has only 10/100Mbps ethernet. Since the iBook NIC is not upgradable I'd like to get as close to Gigabit as possible.
You can use TCP/IP over FireWire - OS X supports this in the Network Preferences. I assume you aren't going through a router as that would bottleneck your connection, so connecting 2 computers with FireWire is really easy.
You can use TCP/IP over FireWire - OS X supports this in the Network Preferences. I assume you aren't going through a router as that would bottleneck your connection, so connecting 2 computers with FireWire is really easy.
What I'm really trying to do though is have gigabit ethernet access to my home NAS and other computers on my network. I want Network Attached Storage. I'm trying to do away with Direct Attached Storage.
Perhaps a stupid question, but is there really going to be a noticeable difference in performance between 100Mbit and 1gig?
For files in the gigabyte range, yes. Also, if the computer with the gigabit card is a file server, then it could be REALLY noticeable depending on how many people are concurrently accessing it. If you are editing uncompressed video or something like that and transferring the files over the network then gigabit would be noticeable because at full bandwidth it's 10x faster than 100MBit speeds.
You computer could be a limiting factor though. If you're computer can't process requests or read data from the hard drive fast enough to saturate the pipe then you won't reach the full bandwidth possible. But, with 1000MBit you have the possibility of getting to 200MBit, that 100MBit doesn't have. So using only 20% of the theoretical bandwidth you could get a 2x increase in speed.
Like I said though, if you are transferring MS Word documents and maybe some 5MP photos, then you won't notice too much of a difference. If you are transferring large files, then you will probably notice a difference.
As the owner of a 1GHz iBook, I have my doubts that it's fast enough to saturate 1 Gbit connection. Of course, this is just conjecture.
I believe that the busses on even a Powerbook are too slow to saturate the connection. But as I said, 200Mbit is even faster than 100Mbit so, if you need something faster than 100Mbit, it doesn't need to operate at a full 1Gbit to give you a speed increase.
Anyone know of a USB2 or Firewire-to-Gigibit Ethernet adapter? My iBook has only 10/100Mbps ethernet. Since the iBook NIC is not upgradable I'd like to get as close to Gigabit as possible.
I have found a USB to Gigabit at Fry's, but can't find Firewire.
My USB is screwed up on this comp and only runs at 1.0 speed.
It has firewire though, so I'd love to find an adapter.
If anybody finds one, pleeeese reply.
And yes, it will help if you save movie files and such, like 350MB each, etc.
USB2 is 480Mbps and Gigabit is 1000. The fastest hard drive around can sustain about 100MBps (800Mbps - notice the cap B, that's bytes, b is bits).
So, do the math.
You'll never need the full 1000 unless you've got 2+ comps accessing at the same time.
Most people are just home networks with just them using 1 of mulitiple comps at a time, so most people are fine.
Caveat, USB is a POS standard and should have never gotten past 1.0, if that.
The Firewire std was available at 400 and 800 before USB2 was released and it's way better, especially for large files, and for alot of other reasons I won't go into. You can thank M$ and Intel for saddling us with the crap choice as usual.
Conversely, USB is TERRIBLE at large files. So, that 480 is more like publicity than fact.
Your exp is as good as mine as to what you actually get realworld.
So far, I haven't clocked it for various file sizes.
Unless you're connecting enterprise-level storage to enterprise-level storage (RAID to RAID), your transfer rate will be limited by the read and write speeds of the drive(s) involved. Writes are slower, and in practice that works out to 300-400 Mbps with normal hard drives. So a USB gigabit adapter would be OK for most home users. You won't get 1000Mbps speeds, but you wouldn't come close to that anyway.
That's 3-4 times the speed you'd get on a 100Mbps network, you can decide if that's worth it.
(And below a certain point, the CPU becomes a bottleneck as well, so no, I don't think a 1GHz iBook would be up to the task)
Comments
Anyone know of a USB2 or Firewire-to-Gigibit Ethernet adapter? My iBook has only 10/100Mbps ethernet. Since the iBook NIC is not upgradable I'd like to get as close to Gigabit as possible.
I've never heard of such an adapter. Probably because they couldn't claim it was a gigabit ethernet device since it wouldn't even be possible to reach the full bandwidth using the device.
Originally posted by Macvault
Anyone know of a USB2 or Firewire-to-Gigibit Ethernet adapter? My iBook has only 10/100Mbps ethernet. Since the iBook NIC is not upgradable I'd like to get as close to Gigabit as possible.
You can use TCP/IP over FireWire - OS X supports this in the Network Preferences. I assume you aren't going through a router as that would bottleneck your connection, so connecting 2 computers with FireWire is really easy.
Originally posted by lundy
You can use TCP/IP over FireWire - OS X supports this in the Network Preferences. I assume you aren't going through a router as that would bottleneck your connection, so connecting 2 computers with FireWire is really easy.
What I'm really trying to do though is have gigabit ethernet access to my home NAS and other computers on my network. I want Network Attached Storage. I'm trying to do away with Direct Attached Storage.
Perhaps a stupid question, but is there really going to be a noticeable difference in performance between 100Mbit and 1gig?
For files in the gigabyte range, yes. Also, if the computer with the gigabit card is a file server, then it could be REALLY noticeable depending on how many people are concurrently accessing it. If you are editing uncompressed video or something like that and transferring the files over the network then gigabit would be noticeable because at full bandwidth it's 10x faster than 100MBit speeds.
You computer could be a limiting factor though. If you're computer can't process requests or read data from the hard drive fast enough to saturate the pipe then you won't reach the full bandwidth possible. But, with 1000MBit you have the possibility of getting to 200MBit, that 100MBit doesn't have. So using only 20% of the theoretical bandwidth you could get a 2x increase in speed.
Like I said though, if you are transferring MS Word documents and maybe some 5MP photos, then you won't notice too much of a difference. If you are transferring large files, then you will probably notice a difference.
Originally posted by mikef
As the owner of a 1GHz iBook, I have my doubts that it's fast enough to saturate 1 Gbit connection. Of course, this is just conjecture.
I believe that the busses on even a Powerbook are too slow to saturate the connection. But as I said, 200Mbit is even faster than 100Mbit so, if you need something faster than 100Mbit, it doesn't need to operate at a full 1Gbit to give you a speed increase.
Back to the original question, I'll add my $0.02... I've never seen the 'adapter' that the original poster is asking about.
Anyone know of a USB2 or Firewire-to-Gigibit Ethernet adapter? My iBook has only 10/100Mbps ethernet. Since the iBook NIC is not upgradable I'd like to get as close to Gigabit as possible.
I have found a USB to Gigabit at Fry's, but can't find Firewire.
My USB is screwed up on this comp and only runs at 1.0 speed.
It has firewire though, so I'd love to find an adapter.
If anybody finds one, pleeeese reply.
And yes, it will help if you save movie files and such, like 350MB each, etc.
USB2 is 480Mbps and Gigabit is 1000. The fastest hard drive around can sustain about 100MBps (800Mbps - notice the cap B, that's bytes, b is bits).
So, do the math.
You'll never need the full 1000 unless you've got 2+ comps accessing at the same time.
Most people are just home networks with just them using 1 of mulitiple comps at a time, so most people are fine.
Caveat, USB is a POS standard and should have never gotten past 1.0, if that.
The Firewire std was available at 400 and 800 before USB2 was released and it's way better, especially for large files, and for alot of other reasons I won't go into. You can thank M$ and Intel for saddling us with the crap choice as usual.
Conversely, USB is TERRIBLE at large files. So, that 480 is more like publicity than fact.
Your exp is as good as mine as to what you actually get realworld.
So far, I haven't clocked it for various file sizes.
If anybody has, let us know!
Agreed.
Back to the original question, I'll add my $0.02... I've never seen the 'adapter' that the original poster is asking about.
I have some USB to Ethernet adapters, and I've certainly heard of the FireWire spec being built into the Ethernet form factor.
But this talk of Gigabit Ethernet is abject nonsense.
I have some USB to Ethernet adapters, and I've certainly heard of the FireWire spec being built into the Ethernet form factor.
But this talk of Gigabit Ethernet is abject nonsense.
I'm not sure what you mean by "built into the Ethernet form factor".
You mean you've seen a Firewire to gigabit Ethernet adapter? Where!
I'm not sure what you mean by "built into the Ethernet form factor".
You mean you've seen a Firewire to gigabit Ethernet adapter? Where!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_13..._1394c-2006.29
It's called IEEE 1394c. Unfortunately, nothing to this spec has been mass produced yet.
I'm certain that standalone dongle adapters exist SOMEWHERE because of this.
That's 3-4 times the speed you'd get on a 100Mbps network, you can decide if that's worth it.
(And below a certain point, the CPU becomes a bottleneck as well, so no, I don't think a 1GHz iBook would be up to the task)