Local networking

In my new work setup, one of the things I did was to upgrade the switch between the two laptops to a D-Link Gigabit switch (less than €30 at a local discount shop if I remember correctly).

I did some benchmarks to compare the speed of copying a 2.4 Gbyte Parallels XP image in several scenarios:

On the old TiBook, local disk to local disk:

$ time cp winxp.hdd winxp.hdd2
real    3m24.703s
user    0m0.032s
sys     0m29.427s

On the Macbook (IM going on, iTunes, a bit of Safari), local disk to local disk:

$ time cp winxp.hdd winxp.hdd2
real    4m15.725s
user    0m0.019s
sys     0m9.391s

From the Macbook to the TiBook over Gigabit Ethernet:

$ time cp winxp.hdd /Volumes/melo/Drop\ Box/
real    5m29.288s
user    0m0.018s
sys     0m23.898s

Nice.

So I moved a lot of FireWire external disks and DVD burners to the TiBook, my "server" and when I want something I just copy it over the network. Less cables to plug in when I get to the office.

Probably the best €30 I spent in the last weeks.