Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!bud
From: bud@ut-emx.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: Request For Opinions:  Optical Fiber Physical Topologies
Message-ID: <11990@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 13 Apr 89 15:33:35 GMT
References: <4824@charon.unm.edu> <29505@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <1507@Portia.Stanford.EDU> <29516@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: bud@emx.UUCP (C. E. "Bud" Spurgeon)
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 19

In article <29516@bu-cs.BU.EDU> kwe@buit13.bu.edu (Kent England) writes:
>In article <1507@Portia.Stanford.EDU> 
>morgan@Jessica.stanford.edu (RL "Bob" Morgan) writes:
>>
>>(Stanford, BTW, is a living museum of cable and signalling methods,
>>and probably not a model for anyone's planning, at least for baseband
>>applications.) 
>>
>	I have this theory of installed wire as a complex system.
>Once your installed base of wire exceeds a certain critical threshold
>(no one ever pulls anything out of his wire "museum"), 

As a former curator of the Stanford wire museum I can second the
observation that no one ever retires a network system that runs, no
matter how poorly designed or implemented it is.  

There ain't no such beast as a "temporary" network.  Network designers
be warned, if you install a quick and dirty hack (like we did at
Stanford), odds are it will become a permanent embarassment.