Increasing peer to peer LAN bandwidth

"Ian McConnell" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Rob Hemmings" <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>
> > I have a couple of systems each of which has three 100Mbps full
> > duplex ethernet ports.
> > Is it possible to use all three (using three X-over cables)
simultaneously
> > to effectively give me a 300Mbps link? I'm only interested in
> > speeding-up file transfer between the two machines (huge DV files).
> > OS is XP Pro.
> > If this isn't possible, both mobo's have firewire ports, but the
shortest
> > cable I could get away with is 7m, and AIUI, firewire is limited to 5m -
> > has anyone successfully used firewire networking with a single cable
> > longer than 5m (ie without using a firewire repeater)? I believe I
> > could achieve about 400Mbps using firewire networking, or have I
> > missed something?
> > Any help/pointers much appreciated.
>
> Is this any use?
> http://heroinewarrior.com/firehose.php3
>
> > Super fast throughput over cheap ethernet.
> >
> > One day while waiting 3 hours for a movie to transfer you stared teary
eyed
> > at some dual ethernet ports and wondered if they could be somehow
combined
> > for ultra high speed file transfers.
> >
> > FIREHOSE gives you that power. FIREHOSE gives you a basic data transfer
over
> > multiple network devices supporting TCP/IP layers. Stripe multiple
100Mbit,
> > Gigabit, 10 Gigabit, or firewire to give one humungous pipe for
firehosing
> > your gigabytes and gigabytes of data.
> >
> > Unlike RAID striping, FIREHOSE striping load balances the network
devices so
> > every ounce of bandwidth is utilized. Combine a 400Mbit firewire eth
device
> > with a 100Mbit eth device to get 500Mbits of power. Combine 10 100Mbit
> > ethernet ports for a gigabit pipe. The number of devices which can be
> > striped is limited only by imagination and budget.

Thanks, Ian - very interesting! I'm not averse to linux, so I'll take a
look at
that as it still might be significantly quicker even if I have to reboot
into linux,
transfer the DV files, then reboot into XP. 13GB (1 hour of DV) takes quite
some time over a 100Mbps full duplex link!
Nice one.
--
Rob