Madge Networks NV is attempting to accelerate the development of the High Speed Token Ring, HSTR, standard to bring it in line with the Fast, 100Mbps and Gigabit flavours of Ethernet. Token Ring networks are currently restricted to a top speed of 32Mbps per connection. Madge, one of the few remaining champions of Token Ring, claims that high speed token ring has only recently been demanded by its customers, as most wer banking on following IBM Corp’s long term strategy of delivering local area network backbone Asynchronous Transfer Mode networks. But now the popularity of Gigabit Ethernet and the claimed lower cost of Gigabit and Fast Ethernet networks is causing Token Ring users to re-consider the use of ATM, and to considering the option of speeding up Token Ring. Madge is hosting a vendors meeting next week to work through the first draft standard of HTSR, in line to present a full draft to the token ring standards committee IEEE 802.5 on November 10. The company is pushing for the delivery of a full 100Mbps standard by mid 1998, with the first equipment delivered in the third quarter, in the shape of switch upgrade cards and sever adapter cards for copper wire networks with other products following later. The longer term Gigabit Token Ring over fibre standard is being proposed in parallel, but as it’s more technically taxing, there has been no date attached to its release. The companies involved in the HSTR effort include IBM, Bay Networks Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, Olicom AS, and Xylan Corp.
