An odd, yet goofy looking boy struggles
up the long flight of steps towards a heavy metal door. He has a terrible
haircut and wears oversized plastic framed glasses. His name is not Bill.
He carries a large glowing object in his hand, which he uses as a
doorknocker.
'Mr. Peabody? Mr. Peabody, are you there?'
'Sherman?' replies a voice as the big door slowly swings open, 'My
dear boy, what brings you to my lab?'
'I found this chunk of amber
Mr. Peabody, w-a-a-y over there, behind the LAN servers. It was hidden
under some IBM manuals. I found it when I dropped my packet. There's
something round inside and nobody can tell me what it is,' babbles
Sherman.
'Hmmm...it's a Token Ring Network, Sherman. I thought
these were extinct.'
'Golly Mr. Peabody, is that like
Ethernet'?
'Oh no my boy, it's something quite different. I think a
trip in the Wayback Machine is needed to refresh our memory about this
technology. Come along Sherman.'
Welcome to Jurassic Parts.
Please Don't Feed the Bandwidth.
(Poof!)
'Wow Mr. Peabody,
just look at all the old, techy thingy's! Where's the Tok...
Toke...'
'Token Ring, Sherman. You missed IBM's Ken Jackson when he
spoke at LANDA's October Dinner Meeting. He informed members that 35% of
the LAN cards sold in Canada are Token Ring, amounting to $58.8M (US).
'IBM supplies 80% of that market, so it doesn't take a genius
(like me) to see that if you're not selling Token Ring you're losing a
large market share!'
'But Mr. Peabody, I'm just a nerdy kid, not a
VAR!'
'Perhaps Sherman, but you can never be too rich or too
thin.'
'Huh?'
'Never mind that now, don't step on the
snake!'
The Pig in the (Monty) Python
'Jeepers Mr.
Peabody, why is it so fat in the middle?'
'That snake is the LAN
pipeline in a typical company, Sherman, and the bulge is the attachment
pig that it's trying to swallow ! Mr. Jackson outlined many reasons for
this growth in LAN traffic, like e-mail and attachment-based applications.
And he described the many devices needed to keep a LAN operational:
specialty servers, port devices, hubs, switches, routers, remote access
points, to name a few.
'But in the end, the result is always the
same: LAN congestion due to shared media. Ergo, any LAN is a bottleneck
waiting to happen !'
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'Gosh, you're smart Mr. Peabody, but how
do to you get rid of pigs, er...bottlenecks?'
'Many companies
resort to drastic measures Sherman - bigger, faster servers; more servers
to divide the workload; more switched ports to dedicate bandwidth; faster
LAN adapters... even migration to...um, faster LAN's.'
'Like Fast
Ethernet, Mr. Peabody?'
'Some folks do Sherman, but we're here in
Jurassic Parts to look at Token Ring. It's the LAN that time forgot.
Remember?'
With Token You're Not Chokin'
'Mr.
Peabody, the snake is choking on the pig !'
'Yes, it's sad but not
surprising Sherman. That snake is a High Speed Ethernet python and it just
can't cope.'
'Look here, I still have the comparison list that Mr.
Jackson left behind on his visit. Ethernet and Token Ring are both shared
media, but the similarities appear to end there.'
It's
Alive!
'So, what have we learned Sherman?'
'Whoa, that's
easy Mr. Peabody! Token Ring is more robust than
Ethernet!'
'Excellent Sherman. When we get back you can read more
about the results of LANDA's Battle of the Bandwidth' challenge designed
by the Tolly Group. It's on both the LANDA and IBM web sites. You can
educate yourself about how good Token Ring is and how customers can be
guided to the best solution.'
'Mr. Peabody, there's another odd
looking creature over there. Is it alive?'
'I believe so. Yes, it
is alive. It's ... it's ... Jeff Goldblum ! Run Sherman, run !'
Need more information?
Ken Jackson, Brand Sales Segment
Manager, LAN Adapters/Modems, Personal Systems Group email: kjackson@ca.ibm.com
Telephone:
(905) 316-4292
Web Sites:
http://www.pc.ibm.com/options
http://www.raleigh.ibm.com/
http://www.networking.ibm.com/
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