MacDev Center posts tutorial on IP over FireWire
updated 12:40 pm EST, Thu November 13, 2003
IP over FireWire tutorial
Wei-Meng Lee has written an , which is now integrated into Mac OS X 10.3 and saying that sharing an Internet connection is preferred over setting up an ad hoc AirPort base station that might compromise security: "With the release of Panther, you can use your FireWire port for Internet sharing using a technology known as IP over FireWire (previously available for download as preview release). IP over FireWire essentially allows IP protocols-based services (such as HTTP, FTP, SSH, etc.) to be used over the FireWire connection. This means that you can use your FireWire port much like your Ethernet port."
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2001
Works with PC firewire
Nifty. I was going to start moving some songs off my PC to my Mac when I read the article so I decided to plug in the old firewire and see if I could get the two to talk. No problem. Just have the make sure you either turn on the internet sharing so the PC will get an IP address or manually assign an address to both ends in order for them to see each other. Otherwise the Windows XP firewire IP networking works directly with the Panther firewire networking code.
As for speed it isn't nearly as fast as a firewire hard drive would be but it is a bit faster than 100Mbit ethernet. Not sure about speed of Mac-Mac connection. If you are testing I am measuring a steady 1.91megaBYTE per second.