[comp.protocols.misc] StarLAN ?

steve@teletron.UUCP (Steve Tse) (06/04/87)

Has anyone had experience with AT&T's StarLAN network?

I was wondering how good is the performance of this 1 Mb/s,
twisted pair, CSMA/CD network in terms of utilization, throughput,
latency, end to end delay and capacity.

Since the StarLAN using an inverted tree hierarchical star topology,
each message sent by a node has to propagate to the HHUB through all
the imtermediate levels and back to the node through the same route.
Will this cause tremendous of delay and lower the throughput of
the system ?

Hence IEEE 802.3 designation of type 1BASE5, 1 stands for 1 Mb/s and
BASE for baseband. What does 5 stand for? Does it stand for the
maximun node-to-node distance 0.5 km ?

I also would like to know how easy it is to get networking hardware
and software (especially for TCP/IP-based systems) and what it all
costs.

I would appreciate any information anyone has on this network.

Thanks,

Steve Tse

alberta!ncc!teletron!stolo/