Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!narten
From: narten@cs.purdue.EDU (Thomas Narten)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: Token Ring (was: Re: Info on LANs)
Message-ID: <5777@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: 5 Jan 89 01:39:23 GMT
Sender: news@cs.purdue.EDU
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University
Lines: 17

In article  <484@babbage.acc.virginia.edu> mac3n@babbage.acc.virginia.edu (Alex Colvin) writes:
>> computer networking over a small local area. Token rings, because of their
>> more complex design, are inherently more expensive and less reliable, but
>
>That's that IBM approach.  Not all token rings are as hairy.  I like Proteon's
>proprietary rings, at 10 and 80 Mb/s.

Proteon (like most Ethernet vendors) botched their ring hardware in
its packet buffering capability.  The ProNET-10 that we have (both
UNIBUS and Q-Bus versions) can't handle back-to-back packets.  The
device apparently cannot buffer more than one packet on board at a
time.  Folks that I know that have used the 80 Mbit ring complain of
the same problem -- they wanted to use it for bulk transfer between
two stations, and it doesn't work well for that.
-- 
Thomas Narten
narten@cs.purdue.edu or {ucbvax,decvax}!purdue!narten