-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 John Andersen wrote: > On Wednesday 13 June 2007, Registration Account wrote: >> and IBM invented >> token ring > > Another roaring success story. Gad what a hopelessly > complex and expensive network. The sad part is they > "invented" it while the unix world was happily running > TCP/IP. >
You are mixing your physical, datalink and transport layers up! You could do TCP/IP networking on Token Ring (802.11 SNAP framing if memory serves me correctly). Physical layer did have some rather annoying structural limits however (but nothing that serious). Damn site more secure than ethernet, physical packet addressing was a characteristic of the datalink layer (one needed a special promiscuous token ring card to access traffic not intended for the card). At that time with a 4/16Mb bandwidth range, dual ring tolerance (you had to chop the cable twice to break the ring) and a very stable loading characteristic, it was a faster and more reliable option than ethernet at a max of 10Mbs. Token Ring networks only tended to slow down when all tokens were in use, whereas for ethernet because of contention issues the only time you are likely to use the full bandwidth was if you have only two machines on the line working in duplex. One or two machines can flatten a whole segment, something that impossible with token ring. Variants of the technology are still in use high speed backbones. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGcQB/asN0sSnLmgIRAtXGAKCLpF7Dn4jKEo49vmjGFpJfXvloUACeI3vg Bzsk4tf6JkzzGc+6m+mfAXs= =fx2u -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
