TCP/IP over Starlan

[Thad P Floryan]

mike at glisten.UUCP (Michael Wendel) in <195 at glisten.UUCP> mentions:

	AT&T has announced Ethernet compatability (IEEE 802.3) with its 
	Starlan 10 product. I have AT&T literature on this product offering.
	It is available directly from AT&T. They provide a toll free number
	for more information:  1-800-247-1212.

The original 1Mbit/sec StarLAN is also 802.3 compatible; more specifically,
ANSI/IEEE 802.3e-1988, Type 1BASE5.

The "new" StarLAN-10 is Type 10BASE5.

The syntax of those "Type" designations is:

	<Mbits/second> {BASEband or BROADband} <x 100 meters>

IEEE 802.3 (presently) permits any of coax, broadband, twisted-pair, and
fiber-optic technologies.

That compliance to IEEE 802.3 does NOT imply that one can "just" plug and
play different vendors' products.  Some of the 8-10 StarLAN vendors' products
are (allegedly) not directly compatible (this comment from "LANS: Applications
of IEEE/ANSI 802 Standards", Madron, Wiley Books, ISBN 0-471-62049-1).

'Bout the only "real" thing in common with all the IEEE 802.3 compliant
networks is "CSMA/CD" (Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection);
witness DECNet's compatibility to StarLAN.

As someone else once said:

"The nice thing about standards is there are so many from which to choose."  :-
)


Thad Floryan [ thad at cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]