Aihuxs.109
net.general
utzoo!decvax!harpo!mhtsa!ihnss!ihuxs!steffen
Wed Apr 14 13:17:08 1982
IBM local net
"IBM is challenging the likes of Arcnet, Ethernet, WangNet in the
electronic office business. ... 
IBM favors wiring machines together to form an electronic circle
while other networks use a backbone wire to which equipment is attached
like branches on a tree trunk. Also, IBM's network would transfer data
to the connecting wire by a method called 'token-passing.' Other
systems, both baseband and broadband, use a transfer method called 
CSMA/CD, for carrier sense multiple access/collision detection."

                                          Wall Street Journal, 3/26/82, p29

Leave it to IBM to find the most unreliable method of local networking, and
then try to ram it down the throats of everyone else.  Guess what happens
when the machine with the token goes down or stops doing useful work, as
IBM machines so often do.  Why, the whole local net stops working.

				Joe Steffen
				Bell Labs, Indian Hill
				(312) 979-5381
				UUCPnet: ucbvax!ihnss!ihuxs!steffen