Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!linac!uwm.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mstar!mstar.morningstar.com!bob From: bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: LAT Message-ID: Date: 14 Jan 91 19:03:53 GMT References: <12653518846.15.BILLW@mathom.cisco.com> Sender: usenet@MorningStar.COM (USENET Administrator) Reply-To: bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) Organization: Morning Star Technologies Lines: 28 In-Reply-To: BILLW@MATHOM.CISCO.COM's message of 13 Jan 91 08:14:59 GMT In article <12653518846.15.BILLW@mathom.cisco.com> BILLW@MATHOM.CISCO.COM (William "Chops" Westfield) writes: The lack of a network layer might be considered an optimization, but this "single LAN" that it allows is a fast-vanishing beast. The fact that it cannot operate over a complex or Wide-area network is a SERIOUS limitation of LAT. Right, but as you later say, ...LAT will not easilly be replaced by Telnet or VTP... 3) There is an enormous installed base of LAT. After a few years of listening in on the "Campus-Size LAN Discussion Group ", it seems that the "single LAN" might not be vanishing quite as quickly as one might hope. There are organizations out there today, actively installing very large bridged networks. Why? because (a) DEC sells bridges and (b) DEC sells LAT; which are complementary solutions to certain problems imposed by the fact that (c) DEC sells VMS. If the DEC salesman got to campus before the Sun or Cisco or Bridge or Proteon salesmen, and if the local tech people grew up in the VMS culture, then the campus computing services bureaucrats are more prone to specifying LAT and bridging their network. The benefits of routers are immaterial in a LAT network, and in fact routers break the LAT functionality upon which the users have already become dependent. Sorry if this sounds like cynical VMS- or DEC-slamming, it's intended only as a recognition of marketing reality.