In 2005, Robin Frost quietly posted a note on the Apple Forums that he was developing an ATA over Ethernet storage product for Mac OS X. ATA over Ethernet works below the IP level and is very fast — Frost says you get over 100 MB per second on each Ethernet port. To his relief, other developers wrote that since he was doing this work, they didn’t have to.
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Besides great performance, this technology works just as you expect it to on a Mac. That’s because last year, Frost went to Cupertino and tested it in Apple’s Hardware Compatibility Lab. What’s next from Robin? Consider Time Machine, coming in Leopard, which will require that you mount a volume to do the automatic backup of your system. Frost says that his ATA over Ethernet solution will be great for Time Machine users.
