dratcw writes "The first commercial LAN was based on ARCnet technology and was installed some 30 years ago, according to this article. Bob Metcalfe, one of the co-inventors of Ethernet, recalls the early battles between the different flavors of LANs and says some claims from the Token Ring backers such as IBM were lies. "I know that sounds nasty, but for 10 years I had to put up with that crap from the IBM Token Ring people — you bet I'm bitter." Besides dipping into networking nostalgia, the article also quotes an analyst who says the LAN may be nearing its demise and predicts that all machines will be individualy connected to one huge WAN at gigabit speeds. Could the LAN actually be nearing the end of its lifecycle?" Link to Original Source
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Metcalfe's quote in the article summary is taken a little out of context, making it sound more sensational than it actually is. From the article:
The token-passing people -- and that included IBM Token Ring -- said they were deterministic, since you knew the token would be passed around in a certain amount of time. But if you counted the processes that had to be undertaken if the token was lost, it was a lie. I know that sounds nasty, but for 10 years I had to put up with that crap from the IBM Token Ring people -- you bet I'm bitter.
He's talking about a specific scenario for token ring failure in this instance, not evil IBM employees.
Metcalfe's quote taken out of context (Score:1)
The token-passing people -- and that included IBM Token Ring -- said they were deterministic, since you knew the token would be passed around in a certain amount of time. But if you counted the processes that had to be undertaken if the token was lost, it was a lie. I know that sounds nasty, but for 10 years I had to put up with that crap from the IBM Token Ring people -- you bet I'm bitter.
He's talking about a specific scenario for token ring failure in this instance, not evil IBM employees.