Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!decwrl!mogul
From: mogul@decwrl.dec.com (Jeffrey Mogul)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: Token Ring (was: Re: Info on LANs)
Message-ID: <27@jove.dec.com>
Date: 9 Jan 89 18:50:36 GMT
References: <12786@cup.portal.com> <920001@hposdl.HP.COM> <10777@s.ms.uky.edu> <18659@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <13096@bellcore.bellcore.com> <18672@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: DEC Western Research
Lines: 28

First, I'd like thank the people who, in defense of Ethernet, have invoked
our paper, and to point out that anyone who actually wants to read it
can send a message to "wrl-techreports@decwrl.dec.com" or
"decwrl!wrl-techreports"; send a message with the word "help" on
the "Subject:" line.  WRL Research Report 88/4 is a slightly expanded
version of our paper in SIGCOMM 88.  ("Us" = Dave Boggs, Chris Kent,
and myself.)  This paper is NOT a comparison of Ethernet to Token Ring,
by the way.

In article <18672@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> glass@tehran.berkeley.edu (Brett Glass) writes:
>>"Ethernet works in practice, but not in theory".
>
>By this, does Boggs mean that the IEEE and others are standardizing
>equipment that can't be proven to work? Gee, maybe I should give up EE
>and change my major to voodoo.... ;-)

This is an example of the danger of putting catchy phrases into a
paper.  What we actually wrote was:
	Ethernet works in practice, but allegedly not in theory:
	some people have sufficiently misunderstood the existing
	studies of Ethernet performance so as to create a
	surprisingly resilient mythology.

Ethernet can be proven to work, both in practice and in theory,
but doing theoretical analysis is hard, often involving unrealistic
simplifying assumptions, and isn't always easy to apply or understand.

-Jeff