Rob,
While the original 10Base-T was a free-for-all with each user
scrambling for as bandwidth as was available, (usually a piece of 8MB
as 2MB or so were consumed with just admin/test functions) the ensuing
100MB standard was quite different. I believe that the home network
discussion was about 100MB and higher CDMA Ethernet.
100MB Ethernet as you recall, had a brief war in 1995/96 with two
competing 802 standard propositions that fully satisfied OSI
requirements. This had nothing to do with with the QoS, CoS or any IAB,
primarily "routing" standards as there no required changes to any
layers of IAB. In fact IAB's big-dog, Cisco, supported both proposed
standards as neither required any protocol changes or layer
adjustments.
One one side (the 100Base-T winning side of pretty much everyone in the
network infrastructure business except IBM and HP) 100MB allowed you to
keep all the NICs currently installed but you did have a preset limit
of 10MB to any single user. You also were and still are required to add
a lot more routers, switches and bridges as when you increase the speed
tenfold you have to cut the distance tenfold in a CDMA environment to
see all the collisions.
On the other side (the 100VG-AnyLAN side of pretty much just HP and
IBM) you could achieve achieve 100MB over voice-grade (standard double
twisted pair) wire but you were required to change the NIC and
everything else remained the same. The main advantage of the VG
solution was that any user could have up to 98MB (theoretically the
entire bandwidth) on a demand basis as VG worked the same way as
token-ring and in fact IBM referred to VG as "token ring on a card".
you could also partition users to either a minimum or maximum bandwidth
as part of the VG admin functions and even within that, set further
limits on time-of-day, etc. The neat thing about VG was if the desk had
a phone on it, it could go VG as the traffic was tunneled under voice
transmissions even when the phone was in use at 25MB/sec (standard
twisted pair has of course 4-wires, one pair connected to the phone and
a spare pair for redundancy, and that's how you got 100MB/sec)
Much like the Beta/VHS debacle, the 100MB Ethernet war turned in favour
of the less-elegant solution as the corporate world believed that the
added infrastructure purchases and the upgrade to Cat5 cabling (a
100Base-T requirement) was better than changing all the NICs if you
already thousands of installed clients which many did.
I'm not I claimed that the number of devices played a role in distance,
just in the amount of traffic generated. If I did, I was clearly wrong.
I believe that I did claim that the number of collisions increased with
the number of devices real really crunches CDMA overall performance.
Lastly, keep in mind that whether wired or wireless, it is still 802.
No matter what the technical people will tell you, Radio's been around
longer (since the creation of the universe) and is a natural, not
man-made like wires. Thank God Radio is NOT LAN! It eliminates the need
for it and most of the technical people who install and monitor it.
Just as your "cell" in not a phone but a Radio, wireless networking
goes with you pretty much anywhere you need to be. Its easier to use,
you don't have to call a network administrator time zones away to see
way you can't get connected from your hotel room's port or their
in-room Internet computers (both of which cost way more than wireless
to use) At present, yes, wireless may be more prone to hacks, attacks,
solar flares and even beeswax, but with already existing solutions such
as fast-hop radio (theoretically impregnable, just ask the military) it
is possible that wireless will ultimately be more secure than wired
solutions. Wanna wait? More power to ya! You can be the Lan
Administrator/manager guy in the secure back room with the preety
lights of the routers, hubs switches, bridges and miles and miles of
cable to trip over (although I hear that in the dark, with really good
weed, the lights can be lots of fun too!), I'll be the guy walking
around with everything he needs in his pocket... a small, single device
where I can send or receive calls, faxes, e-mail, take, edit and send
still, motion images and surf the net at my leisure. Hell, with all
that capability I don't even really care how "small" the device is,
just as long as there's no wire trailing a half a world or so behind me
(although the guy in the back room I have to speak to when I can't
log-in very high and cool!)
Indeed, wireless is not for the faint of heart. Progress never is.
Unfortunately I'm old enough to remember the days when we were saying
"you're putting all your important stuff on computer", "what will
happen if it gets erased" (of course in political circles this was a
dream... no shedder required, Ollie), "what if we lose power" (yes I do
go back to before the days of NOVRAM, yikes!) "or the floppy gets
bent", and so on.
Cheers and happy rolling!
Garth.
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