Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp are supporting an expansion to the IEEE Standard 100Base-VG technology to include Token Ring support. The technology, to be known as 100VG-AnyLAN, will support both Ethernet and Token Ring frame formats. The move follows Proteon International Inc’s announcement last week (CI No 2,264) to ‘lead the development’ of an IEEE standard supporting Token Ring frames over 100Base-VG. Proteon has welcomed the IBM-Hewlett announcement, claiming it as proof that the need for a standard had been recognised: Last week we were alone and our worst fear was that we were not big enough to enforce our proposal, said a company spokesman. Now, with this endorsement, we are sure to be successful. Not everyone is as enamoured. Martin Taylor, product marketing manager of Madge Networks Ltd, which released the Smart 100 Ringnode family of 100Mbps FDDI network adaptor boards in August, has three reservations: the proliferation of standards when there is already a very fine and workable standard – called FDDI; the likely arrival of Asynchronous Transfer Mode before the standard is ratified; and the details of AnyLAN implementation – how routers and servers will make sense of a network taking both Token Ring and Ethernet frame formats, and whether it will require eight wires, instead of the two pairs used in most Token Ring installations. Proponents of the new standard, however, rebut these doubts. Proteon claims that if FDDI was going to be successful, it would have been by now, and says that it expects to have products out by the second half of 1994, in advance of any significant roll-out of Asynchronous Transfer Mode. In the meantime, Hewlett and IBM say that the only new network elements required for migration to AnyLAN are a concentrator and adaptor boards; existing applications, cabling, bridges and routers will not have to be changed, the firms say.
