Aihuxs.109 net.general utzoo!decvax!harpo!mhtsa!ihnss!ihuxs!steffen Wed Apr 14 13:17:08 1982 IBM local net "IBM is challenging the likes of Arcnet, Ethernet, WangNet in the electronic office business. ... IBM favors wiring machines together to form an electronic circle while other networks use a backbone wire to which equipment is attached like branches on a tree trunk. Also, IBM's network would transfer data to the connecting wire by a method called 'token-passing.' Other systems, both baseband and broadband, use a transfer method called CSMA/CD, for carrier sense multiple access/collision detection." Wall Street Journal, 3/26/82, p29 Leave it to IBM to find the most unreliable method of local networking, and then try to ram it down the throats of everyone else. Guess what happens when the machine with the token goes down or stops doing useful work, as IBM machines so often do. Why, the whole local net stops working. Joe Steffen Bell Labs, Indian Hill (312) 979-5381 UUCPnet: ucbvax!ihnss!ihuxs!steffen ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.