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LAN Turns 30, May Not See 40?
Posted by
Zonk
on Thursday January 31, @03:18PM
from the getting-senile dept.
from the getting-senile dept.
dratcw writes "The first commercial LAN was based on ARCnet technology and was installed some 30 years ago, according to a ComputerWorld article. Bob Metcalfe, one of the co-inventors of Ethernet, recalls the early battles between the different flavors of LAN and says some claims from the Token Ring backers such as IBM were lies. 'I know that sounds nasty, but for 10 years I had to put up with that crap from the IBM Token Ring people — you bet I'm bitter.' Besides dipping into networking nostalgia, the article also quotes an analyst who says the LAN may be nearing its demise and predicts that all machines will be individually connected to one huge WAN at gigabit speeds. Could the LAN actually be nearing the end of its lifecycle?"
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Your Rights Online: FTC Defends Ethernet From Patent Troll 59 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The FTC has put a stop to Negotiated Data Solutions, a patent troll that bought a patent on an important part of the Ethernet networking standard and tried to jack up the royalties for licensing it. In a consent decree (pdf), N-Data agreed to continue licensing the patent at the formerly promised rates. 'Whatever the merits of the decision, it shows that the FTC sees the value of standards and will be on the lookout for any behavior that could undermine these standards-setting process. That alone could keep companies honest when they enter the standards process. Standards-setting bodies have also become more sophisticated over the years (after being burned in several high-profile cases), and now do a better job at forcing involved companies to disclose and license patents.' The IEEE voted back in 2002 to make patent letters irrevocable, which could have prevented this, but neglected to make that clause retroactive."
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Well, could it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. All computers in the future will be stand alone and the Interweb will be shut down.
Somewhat interesting article, stupid summary question.
Re:Well, could it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, that must be the next thing, since copper, or any conductor, has its limitations.. (speed of the electrons, eddy currents, all that fun science...) With the advent of stopping light, quantum computing (vaporware?) fiber must be next... mmmm... everbody needs a little fiber in their diet!
Re:Well, could it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some networks, for example, should never be connected to the internet in any way.
Re:Well, could it? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:WAN, SCHMAN (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WAN, SCHMAN (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever the limitations of 802.11 may or may not currently be, that doesn't mean much about the long-term prospects of wireless. 10 years ago I would have thought reclaiming the analog TV spectrum would be impossible, now it's happening before our eyes. Outside of a post-nuclear attack scenario, I can't think of any reason to say wireless is inherently unreliable.
Re:WAN, SCHMAN (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, I completely disagree with the author. There is no way that companies want to put all thier servers (not to mention clients) directly on the Internet. Firewalls will always exist for security reasons, and thus so will LANs.
Re:WAN, SCHMAN (Score:4, Informative)
Well, there is a middle ground. Most of the "security" from firewalls today comes from the fact that a public IP will have just a handful of ports forwarded to an internal box, and the services on the box will be listening on the LAN IP. Basically, NAT of various sorts protected everything by default, and you forwarded what you want. Once IPv6 becomes widespread, firewalls will simply restrict the data going in and out, rather than redirecting it to different IPs and/or ports. There will still be home routers/firewalls, but (hopefully) all the boxen behind them won't hide behind their (the routers') addresses.
"Internet enabled"-everything (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, of course ! How do you think that they'll enforce even more stupid forms of DRM (that will force RMS to counter writing even more complex versions of GPL) ?
And how do you think that de government will spy on you, using the RFID tag reader in your fridge and fine you if you don't buy the mandatory 10% corn-based products required by some law that some lobby pushed ?
In 10 years, even tinfoil hats will be network-enabled.
Re:"Internet enabled"-everything (Score:4, Funny)
Are you sure yours is working properly? Let me ssh in and take a look at it.....
Re:WAN, SCHMAN (Score:4, Insightful)
With regard to networks, it's basically inarguable that the many network-enabled devices in people's homes will be sharing a single pipe from an ISP. It is also essentially inarguable that (for the foreseeable future) Ethernet will remain the common hard-wire standard for network connections. Multiple Ethernet connections will require some sort of switching hub to manage the traffic into and out of the shared internet connection, as well as between the various devices. Wireless will likewise still require some sort of central access point. So where, exactly, does this "visionary" genius see the change happening? This is already what we have now, and there's no real reason to change it. Is it a veiled reference to IPv6? Is he simply saying that NAT is going to become superfluous and that somehow that means the same as "the LAN will disappear"? Is he really claiming that no one will firewall their home devices at their [cablemodem/DSL/FiOS] connection, and will choose to allow anyone on their subnet to come browse their shares? Seriously, the internet is a great tool for mass communication, but this ain't no hippy commune. Anyone with enough sense to come in out of the rain is going to want to separate their stuff from the rabble outside. And if so, how is that--- a set of IP addresses behind a firewall--- not basically a LAN?
As long as the need for a secure network exists... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As long as the need for a secure network exists (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not LAN vs wireless, it's LAN vs WAN.
Running a WAN without using LANs throughout is nonsense. IIRC a WAN is just bridged LANs by definition. Proposing that all the LANs will have one node is just silly.
Typical Bob Metcalfe of recent years. The man has lost it. Granted I haven't bothered reading anything he's written in a few years.
Re:As long as the need for a secure network exists (Score:4, Insightful)
NAT != Firewall. (Score:5, Informative)
Once you do, understand that NAT is a brutally ugly hack. It's much easier and more powerful to simply be able to open a firewall port than to have to forward ports.
And you do need a firewall on your computer -- that, or just turn services off. If you don't do one of the two, wireless will bite you someday.
End of the LAN? Not really. (Score:5, Interesting)
Or at least, they should, but then people do some pretty stupid things sometimes.
Re:End of the LAN? Not really. (Score:4, Interesting)
* Putting you in control of your own infrastructure
* Ensuring quality of service (e.g. bandwidth that is not shared with the rest of the world)
* Managing your own costs
LAN or WAN (Score:5, Insightful)
Yawn... (Score:5, Funny)
Prognosticator didn't used to be a synonym for clueless shithead. Thanks to Dvorak, that has changed, and looking at the clueless shitheads he's spawned.
going away? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not as long as they let me control my own home network...
'LAN' ? (Score:4, Funny)
We call that 'Intranet' nowadays.
Silly prediction... (Score:4, Insightful)
The LAN as we know it, one central switch with a lot of ethernet cables getting out to individual ports in rooms, has been here for ages.
What didn't go away was the local addressing methods for sending data to all hosts (broadcast) and interaction with higher level protocols (ARP for determining the IP address).
The LAN as we are going to know it, a bunch of intercepted central-and-not-so-central switches which put you in the right (V)LAN when you plug in your computer to a random port connected to it, is here also if your organisation requires it, but for smaller organisations this is not really necessary:
and predicts that all machines will be individually connected to one huge WAN at gigabit speeds
You need a gigabit WAN for that to work, not all smaller organisations have the need for this. But yes I have rolled it out for two customers.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Token Ring (Score:4, Interesting)
Two months later, at a big conference for all True Believers conducted by IBM, actually heard IBM plants in the audience doing the amen corner thing with Greek Chorus of "alas, Ethernet would kill the King" lines.... up to the "802.3 will make it hurt when you pee" level of nonsense.
The fact that a 3745 [burly iron werken] running remotely was actually running on the backup token ring thingie for a month before it fell over and died because the primary ring had never worked [vague memory of route discovery]was, well, pretty f'n sweet.
IBM's always been a great company, seriously, but the LAN wars were not its finest hour.
Every doorway opens onto a freeway? (Score:5, Insightful)
LANs will survive indefinitely precisely because sometimes your data is just feet or yards away
Reliability (Score:5, Funny)
When you need 100% uptime you can go with a $30 router or spend significantly more than that for a wireless router and network card that won't ever drop your connection.
I'll keep my wires thank you very much.