Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Starlan/Ethernet compatibility
Message-ID: <1989Jun27.165911.1613@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> <1989Jun26.163706.1078@utzoo.uucp> <26135@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 89 16:59:11 GMT

In article <26135@amdcad.AMD.COM> ncpjmw@amdcad.UUCP (Mike Wincn) writes:
>... My point is that there a many vendors who already 
>offer a version of Twst.Pr. Ethernet, and many others who are ready to do
>so.  From many reports there exists a strong market desire for such media 
>access method.  As long as there are going to be many players it makes 
>perfect sense to me that they should all be compatible at some minimal level.  

Provided that we understand the tradeoffs involved and the technical
alternatives.  It is not at all clear to me that there is enough real,
live experience with the hardware to justify that.

>... Does it make sense to you that we 
>SHOULDN'T invoke a process that weeds out those schemes "...whose 
>practicality is very unclear" ?

I think such a process would be great, if it existed.  The current
standards process does not consistently do this.  IEEE, to give them
credit, often does okay.  That's not universally true of other standards
bodies, unfortunately.

Actually, there is such a process:  real world experience with hardware.
Standardization should be based on that, rather than trying to anticipate
it.

>>There is also no shortage of standards that are functional, but verifiably
>>inferior in essentially every way to the previous de-facto standards.
>
>Okay, I'll bite... verify it.

The lower layers of ISO networking, versus TCP/IP.

(The ISO folks do seem to be doing some useful things at higher levels.
One could wish they would concentrate on that and leave the lower ones
alone.)

>>... 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.
>
>...and there once were people who thought that the world was flat, and that
>there was no need to consider any other possibility.  

And surprise surprise, once the dust settled -- as the result of real-world
experience, not theological pontification -- one and only one possibility
turned out to be useful and correct.  Do *you* feel any need to consider
the possibility that the world might be flat? :-)
-- 
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