Networking more than one Playstation 3.

[babcat]

I have a question. Since we now know that the PS3 will be able to run an advanced LINUX OS does the console have the hardware to network itself to other units? For example, I know many people who have more than one Playstation 2. Over the next several years some people might accumilate more than one PS3. Is there a way to network more than one Playstation 3 together?

One the Playstation.com site it says under communication

Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T)

Can someone use this to network more than one PS3?

Here are the definitions for each one:

10Base-T 10 Mbps baseband Ethernet over twisted pair cables with a maximum length of 100 meters.

100Base-TX 100 Mbps baseband Ethernet over two pairs of shielded twisted pair or Category 4 twisted pair cable.

1000Base-T 1000 Mbps baseband Ethernet over four pairs of Category 5 unshielded twisted pair cable.

Does the PS3 have three of these ports or just one that supports all three?

 

[DeanA]

Does the PS3 have three of these ports or just one that supports all three?

Just the one that supports all three.

Dean

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It did have 3, but I can't remember if that's been reduced to 1 or 2 now. If there's 2, you should be able to chain them together.

Edit : With Dean's comment above, that'll mean yo'd need some networking gear (router) to connect multple PS3's together. In fact peer-to-peer might not even be supported.

 

[babcat]

Dean A,

Thank you very much for the answer. I appreciate it.

After thinking about this I'm wondering if perhaps you could connect several PS3's to a central "hub" so to speak (each PS3 connecting with it's single ethernet cord to the hub) with multiple ETHERNET ports and then connect that to the "controlling" Playstation 3. I would guess that LINUX comes with networking software you could utilize to control everything.

It's just facinating to me because with Linux we have the ability to run all sorts of interesting applications from distributed computing applications to graphical rendering farms. It just makes sense to utilize the CELL's awsome computing ability for these tasks. I'm just trying to figure out how complicated and difficult this would be for the average person.

When Planet Quest gets up and running (the distributed computing program that will let you process data from telescopes all around the world to detect even MERCURY sized planets around other stars) I want to find me a planet with my Playstation 3's vast computational power!

 

[Bobbler]

When Planet Quest gets up and running (the distributed computing program that will let you process data from telescopes all around the world to detect even MERCURY sized planets around other stars) I want to find me a planet with my Playstation 3's vast computational power!

Fold instead! Screw finding planets.

 

[Arwin]

It just depends on what Sony wants. There's tonnes of ways they could go about allowing you to link the stuff up.

First of all there is of course the network port, as mentioned. This is a typical PC UTP cable, and you can use it to connect the PS3 through a HUB or Router to other devices, including your PC.

However, there is also something called a cross-wire cable. This simply has the cables reversed on the connectors compared to the regular wires, and with these you can connect two PS3's directly, just as you already could with the PS2.

Then of course there is the Wireless support. With this, all wireless devices supporting the same protocol (basically that should be pretty much all of them) should be able to talk to each other.

Also, they could support hooking up two PS3s over the USB 2.0 port.

And finally, they could even allow PS3s to talk to each other over BlueTooth. This would probably be the slowest option, but its still reasonable.

In short, there are no technical limitations; rather there is an abundance of ways for the PS3 to talk to other PS3s, PCs, the PSP and so on.

It all comes down to what Sony decides to support, but you can rest assured that it will support at least some functions, and very likely if you decide to go the Linux route, you'll be able to try out each and every one of them soon enough.

 

[Bobbler]

However, there is also something called a cross-wire cable. This simply has the cables reversed on the connectors compared to the regular wires, and with these you can connect two PS3's directly, just as you already could with the PS2.

You may not even need that... most GbE adapters will auto detect and do cross-over internally without any outside help. Should just be able to plug two PS3's together with a normal RJ45.

 

[babcat]

Thanks Arwin for the explanation! Of course I'm only going to have one Playstation 3 for a while, but I'm certainly going to explore LINUX and learn as much about it as I can. If it's as fully functional of an OS as it seems then I'm probably going to use the PS3 more than my Windows PC. Also, I'm eager to see what other people do to network together multiple PS3's. If nothing else, I'm going to figure out a way to network my Windows PC to my PS3 to see if I can get some distributed computing going with my extra cycles.

I'm eager to see just how badly the CELL beats my PC at crunching data!!!

 

[DeanA]

After thinking about this I'm wondering if perhaps you could connect several PS3's to a central "hub" so to speak (each PS3 connecting with it's single ethernet cord to the hub) with multiple ETHERNET ports and then connect that to the "controlling" Playstation 3.

Probably best to not think of one of the PlayStation3 units being a 'controlling' one.. Basically, imagine a normal home network, connected to something like a wireless/wired router. Lots of machines all share a single external net connection through the router, but can also communicate with each other. There's no need for a single 'master' device..

I guess you're wondering though about distributed work. Depending on what you end up doing under Linux (which of course depends on what Linux can do on PS3), there may be tasks that are distinctly master/slave based (such as distributed compilation of applications), but there's the possibility for all PS3s connected via such a router to be doing independent bits of work. This is the setup behind these protein-folding/seti style apps.. they all get a chunk, then they chew through it, then they send the results back.

About the connections.. as Arwin says, there may only be one physical ethernet port on the box, but the machine is capable of using built-in wifi (for the top-end unit anyway), and additional wi-fi connections via compatible USB adapters. Not sure what benefits there are in having multiple external networking connections from one box, considering a single physical connection already supports multiple external connections (ie multiple sites, pc's etc) anyway.

Myself, I'm hoping the networking/Linux side is implemented well enough to allow someone to write an Xbox Media Center-a-like application that means I can stream video/audio from my PC/Mac.

Cheers,
Dean

 

[Shifty Geezer]

About the connections.. as Arwin says, there may only be one physical ethernet port on the box, but the machine is capable of using built-in wifi

The downside to that being limited BW. Wifi's fine for internet access and network gaming, or sending print jobs, but for proper distributed computing the Gigabit won't be the bottleneck 56 Mbps peak Wifi is.

 

[ban25]

Myself, I'm hoping the networking/Linux side is implemented well enough to allow someone to write an Xbox Media Center-a-like application that means I can stream video/audio from my PC/Mac.

Just use something like mplayer with Samba...

 

[Bobbler]

Myself, I'm hoping the networking/Linux side is implemented well enough to allow someone to write an Xbox Media Center-a-like application that means I can stream video/audio from my PC/Mac.

Cheers,
Dean

Isn't something like that in the cards for PS3's XMB anyways? The whole upnp/dlna thing?

Should be able to scout out your PC's media files if you have a DLNA server on it (a DLNA/UPnP NAS would be pretty sweet for that). Not sure if that will be implemented at launch (would be surprised if it was), but it's been said that they want to include it at some point -- should be pretty seemless too. PSP was supposed to be getting a DLNA compliance firmware update as well. You probably know more than I do though.

It was talked about at CES this year, I think.

 

[DeanA]

Isn't something like that in the cards for PS3's XMB anyways? The whole upnp/dlna thing?

If something like that is coming along (and I genuinely don't know whether it is or isn't), I doubt it'll stream video in some of the more popular codecs (xvid, divx etc). So personally I'm not sure it would be something I'd find useful.

Cheers,
Dean

 

[DeanA]

Just use something like mplayer with Samba...

When it comes with a GUI that's as usable as XBMC's (or Windows Media Center), sure.. until then, I'd probably just continue to use my Xbox..

Cheers,
Dean

 

[babcat]

DeanA,

Thanks for the additional explanation!

I was just thinking, with all the research in getting general purpose computation from GPUs it's possible such a network of PS3's could also benefit from whatever computational resources the RSX has to offer.

 

[Arwin]

Myself, I'm hoping the networking/Linux side is implemented well enough to allow someone to write an Xbox Media Center-a-like application that means I can stream video/audio from my PC/Mac.

Cheers,
Dean

I assume we'll get a PMP player like application for PS3. This one already has a version that supports streaming from PC to PSP.

 

[DeanA]

I was just thinking, with all the research in getting general purpose computation from GPUs it's possible such a network of PS3's could also benefit from whatever computational resources the RSX has to offer.

If you can leverage the specific task onto RSX, then sure.. I can't see how it'd be different to each SPU running a task and sending results around in that respect. The really difficult bit would be getting general purpose code (like protein folding, for example) running on RSX in the first place. And the fact that RSX would need to be used while generating any user-visible stuff (like your Linux GUI )

Cheers,
Dean

 

[ban25]

When it comes with a GUI that's as usable as XBMC's (or Windows Media Center), sure.. until then, I'd probably just continue to use my Xbox..

Cheers,
Dean

It seems they may now have some kind of basic GUI out of the box, but it is one of the best media players on any platform, both in terms of quality and performance. There are also plenty of front-ends available:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/projects.html#unofficial_packages

Needless to say, I find mplayer/mencoder useful even on Windows.