On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 01:03:51PM -0700, Ming Lei wrote:
> By the way, I dont quite understand the use for IP over 1394 and who is the
> target user. Any one knows? 

Apart from the "just because we can" aspect of building a full
protocol stack, and targetting 1394 as a universal interface, there
are a couple of specific uses I can see.

 - cheap speed. Now gig-ethernet is commodity hardware, but back
   when 1394 was emerging, it wasn't. Putting together a fast backbone
   for a cluster (or whatever) using 400mbps firewire was attactive
   - must faster than 100m ether, much cheaper than gig-e (and still
   is if you consider the need for switches, perhaps).
 - device management. In the SAN market, it's not uncommon for (eg)
   smart fc-al raid controllers to be managed from a GUI over IP,
   and for the IP to be either via its ethernet port or over fc-ip;
   the GUI is agnostic, and written using standard tools that
   gui-writers are familiar with.  I can see reasonable motivation
   for (eg) a videocam vendor to do similar (perhaps a web-based
   interface).

--
Dan.