From: tal@plts.uucp (Tom Limoncelli)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Moving from coax to 10BaseT
Date: 26 Jan 1993 01:07:09 -0500
Organization: P.L.T.S., North Plainfield, New Jersey, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: plts.uucp

In <1993Jan24.231044.16138@xenitec.on.ca> merce@xenitec.on.ca (Jim Mercer) writes:

>having UTP throughout the building now allows us to wire 10baseT, Starlan1,
>tokenring, RS232 and other stuffwith the same wire.  life is much better.

This the the crux of the matter.  Making life easier.  10baseT does
have a lot of advantages in that regard.  My favorite is the ability to
run "n" UTP lines to each office and you can use them for "n" of the
following: phone, 10baseT, appletalk, serial, second phone, serial
line, [I'm sure others can add to this list.]

However, converting an old office building that's already wired for one
kind of networking to any other is a whole 'nother matter.  No 2-page
article in a throw-away networking magazine can tell you what's right
for you.  I would never convert an entire building from one networking
technology to another without a LOT of thought about what my needs might
be in the next i years (where i is different depending on your
corporate culture).

I think the real question is "Why are industry pundits starting to
recommend 10baseT all over the place?"  I think the answer to that is
simple:  They know that all the new machines coming out have it built
in.  Look at the back of all the new SparcLX/SparcClassic, the DEC
Alpha, HP, etc.[*] and guess what's there.  Also, they know that
by the time a person needs to convert from 10baseT to the next level
of networking [CDDI?] someone will have developed a way to run
it over UTP.  (or so we all hope :-) ).

I laugh in December when every industry pundit writes a column of
"predictions for next year".  Most of what they list are things that
they've been told under non-disclosure but they don't name the company.
For example, "This will be the year for ISDN" was a good prediction
for 1993 since anyone with a couple non-disclosure agreements could 
tell you that EVERY new machine has ISDN hardware because EVERY
computer company thinks that Mitch's EFF is going to get congress
to pass their ISDN package.  Nostradamus?  Bah.  He just had
the right connections.

Tom

Footnote: [*] I would have listed the Sparc 10 but that would be
unrealistic since everyone knows that they aren't really shipping.  Oh
sure, Sun shipped a few so their press-releases can say that they're
shipping, but talk to anyone that has ordered one and you'll find that
they've been told "next week" for the last 3 months.  I doubt they'll
ship in quantity for another year and by then Sun should have developed
a chip who's design wasn't DOA.  ...but that's just my opinion.
If you want to have fun with a Sun salesthing:  Next time they tell
you "next week" bet them dinner that it won't arrive in the next 7 days.
-- 
Tom Limoncelli -- tal@plts.uucp (home) -- tal@warren.mentorg.com (work)
Moderator of ne-social-motss and the Drew University Alumni/ae mailing lists.
"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is
right with America." --Bill Clinton's inaugural address, 1/20/93