Cabletron Systems Inc has developed a research offering that enables 100Mbit per second FDDI signals to be transmitted over both shielded and unshielded twisted pair cabling rather than the fibre optics for which it was intended: the company presented its research findings in conjunction with National Semiconductor Corp at an ANSI X3T9.5 meeting held in Bloomington, Minneapolis late last month; based on distance testing of FDDI technology, Cabletron is making further development efforts by integrating its discreet technology into a new chip set jointly developed with NatSemi; the technology provides wave shaping and receive functions necessary to carry FDDI data over both medium types, and the company says that the testing has been conducted in full compliance with FCC Class A emissions while operating at 100Mbits per second over data grade UTP cable; it says that it plans to integrate the jointly-developed chip set into FDDI applications including its Desktop Network Interface cards, Media Interface Modules for the Multi Media Access Center intelligent hubs.
