Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!David
From: David@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: Standards/Trailblazer Discussion
Message-ID: <7896@cup.portal.com>
Date: 5 Aug 88 19:04:25 GMT
References: <7805@cup.portal.com> <3419@phri.UUCP>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 30
XPortal-User-Id: 1.1001.3426

In article <3419@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>	David misses my point, which is that *ALL* computer equipment is
>disposable and is headed for the trash can in a few years.  It wasn't too
>many years ago when I was agonizing over whether I should go with Bell 212A
>(i.e. standard) modems or some other manufacturer's (was it Ventel?) almost
>standard 1200 baud modems which were supposed to be more resistant to line
>noise.  Guess what?  5 years later, it makes precious little difference
>which decision I made then because we almost never use 1200 baud any more
>and I fully expect that within a year or two we won't support it any more.

Well, nothing lasts forever, I can agree with you there.  In fact, most 
network planners other than myself use a three year period as the time 
period a given piece of equipment will be in service, and do their 
financial analyses accordingly.  But I prefer a five year plan, as it is 
more appropriate for my current environment.

By the way, my company has scads of 212A modems still in use, many only 
used in 103 mode.  Many 208s also.

So, you can justify the non-standard approach.  Fine.  The trash-can 
syndrome doesn't bother you.  But, your environment is different than mine; 
I *know* that the gear I install today is going to be staring me in the 
face four years from now, either still serving the same application or with 
me wanting to re-use it in applications I can't possibly predict now.  I 
believe that any network planner in a Fortune 100 corporation is in the 
same situation.

David@cup.portal.com
David McCord
415/424-5644