Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Starlan/Ethernet compatibility Message-ID: <1989Jun26.163706.1078@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <2009@wasatch.utah.edu> <2230006@hprnd.HP.COM> <1989Jun22.155454.7396@utzoo.uucp> <26097@amdcad.AMD.COM> Date: Mon, 26 Jun 89 16:37:06 GMT In article <26097@amdcad.AMD.COM> ncpjmw@amdcad.AMD.COM (Mike Wincn) writes: >You know, there must be SOMETHING about living in a Zoo that alters one's >sense of logic and reason... Fortunately I don't live in one (although I work in a Zoology department, which is almost as bad...) ;-) >... so, Spencer is not interested in alternative, cost effective LAN solutions I prefer solutions which don't involve serious technical compromises; last I heard, any twisted-pair 10Mbps network did. (I admit to not being familiar with the twisted-pair-Ethernet-proposal-of-the-week.) >>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. It was a satire on your argument, which essentially read "the usual standards don't solve *my* problem, therefore a new standard is needed". >I have yet to hear of any system that completed the standards development >process and wound up not functional... I can think of some that have never been implemented in their full form. I can think of others that are widely implemented, except that everybody ignores the stupid parts and does things right instead. I don't know what you consider "not functional", but these come close. And people whose opinions I consider reliable are seriously worried about some of the current mania, especially in Europe, for standardizing things that have never been tried and whose practicality is very unclear. There is also no shortage of standards that are functional, but verifiably inferior in essentially every way to the previous de-facto standards. >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. My contention is not that LAN standards are unnecessary, but that at 10 Mbps we have enough -- indeed, too many -- of them already. We would be better served by one or two *good* ones than by standardizing every variation anyone's marketing department can think of. -- NASA is to spaceflight as the | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology US government is to freedom. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu