ARCNET Never Received Enough Credit [History]
Thomas George · IEEE Industry Applications Magazine · 2017
In the March 2017 issue of IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, the authors of "The Future of Industrial Communication" provided a comprehensive chart of industrial communication milestones ranging from the 1960s to the present [1]. But there was one glaring omission-the Attached Resource Computer Network (ARCNET). As a former chair of the ARCNET Trade Association (ATA), I feel obligated to defend ARCNET as the first local area network (LAN), which is still in use today [2]. It is a technology that impacted both the office and industrial automation industries. It is elegant, fast, robust-and it works! The technology was deemed by the press as "the Rodney Dangerfield of network computing," and its proponents were called fanatical [3]. Although ARCNET has failed to receive the recognition it deserves, it is a successful technology that has been used in applications never imagined by its creators.