morgan@jessica.Stanford.EDU (RL "Bob" Morgan) (12/19/89)
InfoWorld of December 11 has an article on page 35 about Cabletron introducing a twisted-pair Ethernet product that they apparently are calling 10BASE-T compliant. Some people chide them for jumping the gun. Can any of the people in the know tell us what the current status of the standard is? I know there was supposed to be some sort of ballot in November, but I haven't heard any results. As a side note, I have to say I find the 10BASE-T process fascinating. The, uh, "scholarly" pace of the work, the size of the market, the appreciation of the standard's value, the nature of the technology, etc, all seem to be perfectly tuned to produce intense levels of frustration in the manufacturers involved (or at least in their marketing departments). I hope someone is gathering material for a techno-political case study . . . Thanks, - RL "Bob" Morgan Networking Systems Stanford
dbuerger@cup.portal.com (David J Buerger) (12/20/89)
Bob Morgan asked about the current status of 10Base-T. My understanding is that full agreement on the spec was not reached in the recent meeting in Florida. Another vote will be taken this Spring (about March-April timeframe) which hopefully will yield a positive result, with the final spec published in Fall 1990. David Buerger
naftoli@aecom.yu.edu (Robert N. Berlinger) (12/21/89)
In article <7765@portia.Stanford.EDU>, morgan@jessica.Stanford.EDU (RL "Bob" Morgan) writes: > As a side note, I have to say I find the 10BASE-T process fascinating. > The, uh, "scholarly" pace of the work, the size of the market, the > appreciation of the standard's value, the nature of the technology, > etc, all seem to be perfectly tuned to produce intense levels of > frustration in the manufacturers involved (or at least in their > marketing departments). I can't really blame the vendors for jumping the gun. We've been hearing about the impending decision on the standard for a very long time now. What are they supposed to do? Cabletron says (I believe) that if the standard changes, they'll upgrade their equipment to comply for free. So what does the user have to lose? The equipment will *probably* meet the standard as is, and if the standard changes, Cabletron will make good. Given that they're willing to do that, I don't see why waiting for the standard to be ratified should make a difference to the end user. The IEEE committee is covering its backside, and that's understandable and only fair. But some of us have networking to do. -- Robert N. Berlinger |Domain: naftoli@aecom.yu.edu Supervisor of Systems Support |UUCP: ...uunet!aecom!naftoli Scientific Computing Center |CompuServe: 76067,1114 Albert Einstein College of Medicine |AppleLink: D3913