info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (09/11/84)
From: Tim McNerney <TIM@MIT-MC>
Several months ago there was discussion on Info-Mac about using Macs as
personal bimapped workstations. The general consensus was that this would
be a great thing, but that protocol(s) would have to be developed to allow
the host and the Mac to negotiate the sharing of work, and to overcome the
bandwidth problem.
Everyone will agree that 1200 baud phone lines are slow even for text
oriented hacking (without some sort of caching and/or data compression).
There is some good new on this front. In the July/August issue of the AT&T
Bell Laboratories Technical Journal (v.63, No.6, Part 2) there are two
articles on AT&T's Local Area Data Trasport system (LADT) which will make
it possible to get relatively cheap 4800 baud data AND voice service over a
single pair of wires.
Also several months ago, there was a rumour posted to Info-Mac that said it
would "soon be possible" to get 56kb service from your local phone company.
Although this is true, the implication of the "AT&T Implementation of [LADT]"
article is that this level of service is intended only for hosts and terminal
concentrators (read "expensive"). Ordinary "subscribers" would be limited to
4800 baud.
Tim McNerney
MIT LCS
P.S. Is anyone familiar with roughly how long it for a service to become
widely available after AT&T announces that the technology is ready?