🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov19.193651.21854@umr.edu> rfranken@mcs213f.cs.umr.edu writes:

   Since someone is sure to bring this up, at heavy loads, ethernet's
   performance is much worse than token-ring (too many collisions).

Yup, and if you hit a brick wall at 60 mph in a Saab, you'll leave a
better-looking corpse than if you hit it in just about anything else.

   (i.e. the fact that token-ring doesn't
   break-down at high load is probably not a good reason to pick it -
   if your wire is that heavily used, you need to sub-net anyway)

Agreed, so why bring it up?

   In article <sige6ao@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com> vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon    Schryver) writes:

   >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.

   Token-ring won't die.  Eventually, FDDI will be much more common
   than E-net and TR.

Both Token-ring and FDDI will die.  Did you miss all the hoopla about
100Mbps Ethernet?  It was in all the papers.

I'm contracting with someone to write an FDDI packet driver.  The
silly thing needs a 180Kb TSR to manage the FDDI connection.

   The token-ring concept is superior to the CSMA/CD concept used by
   Ethernet.  It is more robust, have lots of error checking and
   correction built in, and  it is designed to take heavy loads into
   account and share the bandwidth as fairly as possible (Ethernet's
   method is just let them collide and we'll randomly pick who gets
   to send).

IBM FUD, IMHO.

   Bottom line, You probably won't go wrong with either, but with
   token-ring, you won't have to worry about one user sticking a
   pin through the cable and downing the entire net.  (Not that
   that's a likely occurance, but it makes the point about
   token-ring's robustness).  Ethernet will likely be cheaper,
   however.

And for the price difference, you could install redundant Ethernets
and still save money.

-russ <nelson@crynwr.com> What canst *thou* say?
Crynwr Software           Crynwr Software sells packet driver support.
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