kwe@bu-cs.BU.EDU (kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent W. England)) (05/31/89)
In article <8905291959.AA24086@monk.proteon.com> jnc@proteon.com (J. Noel Chiappa) writes: > > Proteon is not yet shipping any FDDI products. I forget what's been >announced, but I know a Multibus board for the p4200 has definitely been >announced. I missed that announcement. Could someone from Proteon run that "announcement" past this list? Dates? Terms? Pronet-80 to FDDI migration? Kent England, Boston University
jas@proteon.com (John A. Shriver) (05/31/89)
Well, normally I try and answer messages offline, but clearly a lot of confusion has arisen here. I will do my best to be non-commercial, but it's almost impossible to answer these questions and do so. ProNET-80 is what we sell today. It is not FDDI. Part of the FDDI technology is based on ProNET-80, but other parts are not. FDDI was designed by a committee, of which we were only one member. ProNET-80 does use the same fiber (type, size, wavelength) as FDDI. I suspect this is what gets confused with FDDI. We are developing FDDI support for the p4200. We have not "announced" a product. We do not announce products prematurely. To quote from the May 22, 1989 PC Week: "...Proteon is developing the p4200 interface for the partially defined FDDI, but will not release a product until the product is fully tested and defined..." Like any potential FDDI vendor, we have to wait for the FDDI SMT standard to develop. We are active on that committee as well. Oh yes, later in the article they dropped a zero from the price (no way am I mentioning the price on the Internet). The field offices have prices and policies. On other questions, FDDI is 100 megabits, over fiber only. The only media option currently under consideration is an option for using laser transmitters instead of LEDs (more distance). There are other standards groups looking at the next generation of speed. The next generation of FDDI may well focus on even higher levels of fault-tolerance (the miltary).
jnc@proteon.com (J. Noel Chiappa) (05/31/89)
Ken, I was just repeating the sense of an article I saw in the trade rags. PC Week, May 22, 1989: 'Proteon Readies FDDI, X.25 Interfaces'. I assumed everyone had seen it (or something similar in ComputerWorld or InfoWorld); I mean, people my wife works with at NASA had seen the PC Week one and shown it to her! "Proteon promised to offer an interface to its p4200 .. router that supports the emerging [FDDI] standard for 100M-bps fiber-optic networks.. The company will release its interface once the FDDI standard is completely defined next year.." One thing in that article that I know is wrong (for those of you who saw it) is where it is talking about "the interface will be available next year for less than $1,500 (sic)"; they dropped a 0 there. This is just a guess on my part, but I suspect that Proteon didn't publicize this on the mailing list since that would count as 'adverising', and we all know commercial entities aren't supposed to use the Government supported parts of the Internet for that. I expect that if you call you friendly Proteon salesbeing, they can tell you more. Noel