eli@spdcc.COM (Steve Elias) (04/14/89)
In article <30661@sgi.SGI.COM> vjs@rhyolite.SGI.COM (Vernon Schryver) writes: !(kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent W. England)) writes: !! With the dual counter-rotating ring you have the secondary !! ring in standby in case of node failure. If a node on the ring fails, !Without an optical bypass, how do you survive ! 1 fault? If you have a !nontrivial number of stations on the ring (i.e. hundreds), you are certain !to have ! 1 broken computer. (Take a reasonable MTBF, and remember the !birthday paradox.) ! !Yes, an optical bypass is expensive. So are FDDI transcievers, chipsets, !and so on. If you are playing with FDDI, you don't care about $, at least !not for a while. Since the vast majority of individual pairs or "work !groups" of computers running operating systems released in Q1 1989 are !unable to eat an entire ethernet, you are using FDDI for reasons other than !simple, end-to-end performance, but that's another paradox. if you are sold on wiring fiber instead of cable, why not use one of the "ethernet-on-fiber" products until your bandwidth needs increase, and fddi prices drop... -- Steve Elias (eli@spdcc.com);(6172399406) "Space is small. The planets are big." -- Heinlein