Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!amdcad!ncpjmw
From: ncpjmw@amdcad.AMD.COM (Mike Wincn)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: Starlan/Ethernet compatibility
Message-ID: <26097@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 23 Jun 89 17:39:26 GMT
References: <2009@wasatch.utah.edu> <2230006@hprnd.HP.COM> <1989Jun22.155454.7396@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Sunnyvale, Ca.
Lines: 55

You know, there must be SOMETHING about living in a Zoo that alters one's 
sense of logic and reason.  In one article, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry
"Flat Earth Delegate" Spencer) writes:

>In article <2230006@hprnd.HP.COM> pat@hprnd.HP.COM (Pat Thaler) writes:
>>...In buying product now, the important question to ask
>>the vendor is "How will you support migration to 10BASE-T when the
>>standard is completed?"

>You know, I'd really like to see at least one vendor reply to that question
>with "we won't, since we think twisted-pair Ethernet is a dumb idea and
>totally unnecessary". 

... so, Spencer is not interested in alternative, cost effective LAN solutions,
and then in a following article he writes:

>Well, in return, I invite you to come and submit a cost-effective twisted-
>pair Ethernet design for connecting my apartment to my workplace.  It's
>only a couple of kilometers away, surely an unimportant constraint... :-)

Instead of an investigation of feasability, or request for factual information,
or logical argument to refute, he offers a taunt.

Perhaps someone should instead check Mr. Spencer for leaking lobotomy scars.

>Standards should not be expected to solve everyone's problems.  Apart from
>some general dislike for the idea, standardizing twisted-pair Ethernet
>simply seems to me to be premature -- all the schemes are new enough that
>nobody has a good idea of which works best, as witness the wrangling over
>which one to adopt.  If the current mania for standardizing everything
>immediately continues, our successors will curse our memories.

Intents of standardizing include, among others, ensuring operability of the
system in its electrical environment and interoperability among various 
vendors.  Operability is reviewed by the people who draft the standard, and
I have yet to hear of any system that completed the standards development
process and wound up not functional.  Satisfaction of the constraints of
interoperability ensures that one can't bring down the net merely by attaching 
some random vendor's product.  Apparently, these concepts are foreign to
Mr. Spencer.

I have never heard anyone suggest that standards attempt to "...solve  
everyones's problems" and some standard is certainly preferrable to
the chaos that would follow a situation where anyone with the manufacturing
capability could offer any variation of LAN implementation he chose.

Mr. Spencer's arguments are, at best, specious and uninformed.

Mike Wincn
ncpjmw@amdcad.AMD.COM
(408) 749-3156

Disclaimer:
The opinions expressed are my own, not necessarily those of my employer, 
nor those of 802.3 Committee or 10BASE-T Task Force.