9fans archive / 1996 / 11 / 56 /    prev next

From: Brandon Black photon@nol.net
Subject: FDDI on plan9
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 10:18:46 -0600 (CST)


.......
> 
> Is there much interest in FDDI? I thought most people skipped it and went
> from Ethernet to Fast Ethernet like we did. Much cheaper. I have Brazil drivers
> for Digital Fast EtherWORKS PCI 10/100 adapter (DE-500-X), 3Com 3C595 and the
> Intel EtherExpress PRO/100B. You can probably buy a hub and half a dozen
> PCI Fast Ethernet cards for the cost of 2 dual-attach PCI FDDI interfaces.
> 
> If, however, you have a requirement for FDDI then the Digital card looks like
> a good choice.
> 
> --jim
> 

Well.. I have this personal thing against CSMA/CD technology in general
..... Then when you throw in better utilization of bandwidth, highly
tunable timing values, ultra low latency, etc... I just think 100Mbps FDDI
has enough superiority over 100Mbps Ethernet that it justifies the cost. 
Of course, there are situations when you want fast ethernet, i.e. if you
want the best interconnectivity between the 100mbps machines and an
existing 10M ethernet network, 100 and 10 ethernet can be
switched/bridged/whatever without a router hop.... FDDI can be
translationally bridged to ethernet, but translational briding brings up
some problems in and of itself.

But for me, wanting a small high performance, all plan 9 network of 5 or
so machines.. having them all on FDDI would be my preference.....

Brandon