Re: Audio link two computers in real-time: ethernet?

[Mech <mech3@m3ch.net>]

At 11:49 PM +0200 7/29/09, van Sinn wrote:
>
>Another possible method, if interfaces aren't capable of handling a 
>contineous datastream, might be bundling two interfaces/ethernets, 
>to double the bandwidth.
>Such bundling is in IT often used to have fault-tolerent connections 
>(if one connection goes down, the other will hopefully still work), 
>but can also be defined to do equal-sharing of bandwidth, which is 
>what I'm talking about.

Link aggregation (with failover).  It's one of the things that the 
company I used to work for was the market leader in.

And, if you've got about $20k for the low end, I'm sure they'll be 
glad to sell you a box to do that.  ;)

>Modern operating systems either have this feature, or it can be added.
>Again, haven't tried this for audio.

I'm suspicious of doing this in the OS.  Back when I quit, both Sun 
and MS had solutions to do these sort of clustering functions, and 
they were both "sub-par", to be kind.  In fact, we had our boxes 
installed at the "black cage" in Microsoft (a cage in their data 
center which is surrounded in a black curtain; it's where they 
install equipment from non-MS vendors, so it can't readily be seen). 
So Microsoft themselves were actually using our products to load 
balance, rather than trusting their own software's capabilities.

Of course, this was right before Vista was released, so perhaps MS 
came up with something new.  Likewise, dunno about Apple.  I'm hoping 
that some of the Linux geeks got wise and came up with something for 
that platform.

Still, in every case, you're talking about a networking function 
that's primarily optimized for a redundant protocol which can even 
deliver packets with data missing or out-of-order (TCP/IP).  I'm not 
sure how bulletproof it would be with a realtime stream.

>Hope I didn't confuse matters with geek talks ;)

Speaking personally, I still enjoy this stuff.  Thanks for the 
nostalgia trip.  :)

        --m.
-- 
_____
"when you think your dreams are shattered, it's time to dream new dreams"