Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utah.edu!haas
From: haas@cs.utah.edu (Walt Haas)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: FDDI over copper
Message-ID: <1990Feb28.105322.4274@hellgate.utah.edu>
Date: 28 Feb 90 17:53:22 GMT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 15

This year should bring a number of FDDI protocol chip sets to market from
various competing vendors.  Looking at what it costs to install FDDI,
I find that the "F" is the largest expense.  In particular it costs me
about ten times as much to install an ST connector as a thinnet BNC, and
fiber is about ten times as expensive/foot.  Therefore it would seem to
me that the ideal way to network clusters of powerful workstations within
a small area, such as the University of Utah Computer Science Department
for a random :-) example, would be to build an interface that used the
FDDI protocol but ran over thin Ethernet hardware rather than fiber.
Presumably such a cluster would be tangential to a fiber FDDI ring to
connect between buildings.

Is anybody working on this?  What's your reaction?

Cheers  -- Walt Haas    haas@cs.utah.edu    utah-cs!haas