[SiddHDS]

I recently discovered my 1394 connection, but haven't been able to surf the net with it... I've always used my Local Area Connection of 100 Mbps, which is good, but if i can get 400 Mbps with the 1394 connection I really would like to do it. Trouble is, it gets connected but nothing gets sent, and when i try to repair it I can't. It tells me that "TCP/IP is not anabled for this connection." what should i do? is it really possible to get all 400 Mbps out of that connection?

[TerryNet]

Don't be fooled by the "Connected" in Network Connections; Windows always says that for firewire (IEEE 1394). I suppose you can get up to 400 Mbps, but you have to have something actually connected--such as a video camera.

[Dezaras]

The 1394 has nothing to really do with your internet connection. unless you have a firewire enabled modem hooked up to your computer with a firewire cable ( not even sure if one exists, though it would be rare if it does). another thing to consider is that even if you did have some 400 Mbps firewire capable modem, you likely dont have 400 Mbps internet service ( lucky you if you do!)

[brandonbr]

You are only going to get speeds of 1-2Mbps from your internet. That 100 Mbps is really for transferring data within your local area netowrk (your house)

[Dezaras]

Well, he might get more than 1-2 Mbps, but he's likely not getting 400, and frankly, depending on where you are 100 would be rare. but greater than 1 or 2 Mbps is not rare. I get much more than that where I live

[brandonbr]

Yes you are right. I was just giving actual speeds. My speed test says about 30Mbps but I never hit more than 2Mbps on any downloads. I wish I could see a download at like 10Mbps, even that is blazing fast. You have some pretty fast speeds.

[zx10guy]

Because people forget about the site they're hitting on the other end. The connection they're getting is likely very limited as it's over a business class connection hosted in a CoLo. With the limited connection speed for a given number of users/customers/connections, a big pipe for one session quickly becomes very small when you're talking about everyone in the world having access to the site. Add to this the issue of the server itself being able to keep up with the number of web requests, and you now have a better picture of why you may have a pipe which can download at 20 Mbps + but can only get maybe 1-2 Mbps. And not every person/company has the resources to pay for big fat pipes coupled with server farms to maximize connection performance.

[TheOutcaste]

Also make sure you are comparing the numbers using the same units.

The download speed meters and ISPs show speeds in Mbps - Mega bits per second. Small b
Downloads are usually shown in MBps - mega Bytes per second. Capital B.
One Byte = 8 bits, plus 1 start and 1 stop bit, so 10 bits per byte. Then there is TCP/IP and Ethernet overhead, the extra bytes in each packet that define the who, what, where to, and where from for each packet, figure 20 %
So a 30 Mbps connection will download at 3 MBps-20%=2.4 MBps at best.
Then there's the protocol overhead, each packet sent has to be acknowledged, plus the overhead for the particular method of downloading; FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, etc, so even with Full Duplex, the download isn't always continuous.

If you are getting consistent 2.0 MBps downloads that's not too bad.

[SiddHDS]

thanks!

I now understand the 1394 connection... i was hoping i could increase my peer-to-peer downloading speeds.


Anyways, it's been interesting discovering all of this, thanks for the lecture!


(i tested for speed and got 66 dl, and 12 up)

[JohnWill]

To increase your network speeds, install gigabit Ethernet all around, I have that here, and my file transfer speeds between workstations can hit 40mbyte/sec, better than you've ever seen from a IEEE-1394 connected disk.