Beyond FDDI
Staffan Fredricsson · 1992
FDDI at 100 Mbit/s promises to eliminate potential bandwidth bottlenecks for demanding LAN applications. While work on the standard is still in progress within ANSI,1 implementations of prestandard networks have started to proliferate. Implementations basically fall into two categories, where FDDI either serves as a high-speed LAN directly attached to powerful workstations, or as a premises backbone network to which medium speed Ethernet and Token Ring networks are attached. However, early implementations of FDDI as a backbone have uncovered several limitations of the technology, which are inherent in the Token Ring (TR) media access control layer of FDDI.2 A variety of commercial 100-Mbit/s backbone alternatives, based on time-division multiplexing (TDM) media access control, have proved more suitable for backbone applications.6,7 Work on a new standard called FFOL (FDDI Follow-On LAN) has recently been started by ANSI. However, the standard is not expected to result in commercial products until after 1995.