c11234@D1.DARTMOUTH.EDU (Stan Dunten) (04/12/89)
We have about 4000 LocalTalk ports connected in about 400 passive stars and found the following to work: 1. We limit the length of each leg of the star to about 100'. 2. We limit the total wire in a star to about 1000'. 3. Then we put a 20-30 ohm terminating resistor at the center of the star, none at the points. Why does this work? My guess is that the wire lengths are so much shorter than a LocalTalk bit on the wire that it acts more like a capacitor than a transmission line. The resistor reduces the time constant to less than a bit time.