🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov18.172211.10451@mccc.edu>, pjh@mccc.edu (P. J. Holsberg) writes:
> If you were starting from scratch (in a college) and had to network 5
> rooms of 30 MS-DOS/Windows PCs (using multiple servers), would you use
> Ethernet or Token Ring, and why?
> 
> Background: a local resident who is an expert for a company that is very
> big in PC networking says that the only reasons that so many campuses are
> networked with Ethernet rather than Token Ring are that (a) Ethernet was
> on the scene first and (b) until recently, Ethernet was less expensive.
> He contends that Token Ring is the answer to the question in the first
> paragraph in that it is now about the same cost as Ethernet, has larger
> packets and is thus more efficient, and has about 60% higher throughput.
> 
> Eagerly awaiting your opinions...


-Ethernet was first.

-Ethernet is still cheaper, and that is not likely ever to change.

-Ethernet is simpler and so more robust.  Any single ring scheme is a
 royal pain compared to ethernet.  The hassles of source routing and
 other token ring "features" must be experienced to be believed.

-10MHz Ethernet is faster than 4Mb/s token ring.  A pair of 16Mb/s token
 ring stations can be 60% faster than a pair of ethernet stations,
 but mostly because of the underlying bandwidth.  At the (now) low
 speeds of ethernet and token ring, there is no interesting effeciency
 difference for stations (not hubs or switches) between packet sizes
 of 1500 and 16K.


Ethernet is far more common and not significantly worse than token
ring.  Since token ring is not significantly better (it can be argued
to be worse since it is so much more fragile), token ring is dead in
the long run.  The universe does not tolerate competing, largely
equivalent standards forever; eventually the less common one disappears.

Something that might hurry up the decades long death of token ring
might be higher speed LAN's.  The short term winner(s) in those wars
might have some effect on the numbers of new ethernet and token ring
networks.  I thinking of cable plants and hubs that can be used for
for both high and low speed links to the desktop.

In some ways, token ring is the equivalent of OSI protocols in the link
layer.  Bigger and much harder to build, harder to install and
maintain, Standard with a capital S but with incompatible varients,
lots of FearUncertaintyandDoubt from supporters, and a zombie.


Vernon Schryver,  vjs@sgi.com