Re: Proposal to remove Token Ring support

[John Nemeth <jnemeth%cue.bc.ca@localhost>]

On Jan 14,  6:44pm, Lloyd Parkes wrote:
}
} As the owner of a Token Ring interface board (perhaps with a
} built in MAU??) I don't mind at all.

    A MAU, Media Access Unit, is the Token Ring equivalent of a
hub.  There is no such thing as a Token Ring interface board with
a built-in MAU.  They are physically quite large (there is a Token
Ring MAU sitting about five feet to my right at this moment) and
you can't operate a Token Ring network without one or something
that does the equivalent (Cisco had Token Ring switches).

     BTW, there was a 100 Mbps version of Token Ring.  However,
like FDDI, 100VG-Anylan, and various other things that came out
around the same time, it lost out to ethernet.

     While I think it would be sad to lose this interesting
technology, I can't commit to do the maintenance especially since
I'm not very famalier with the network stack.  I do however have
the equipment to test it.  Unfortunately the only usable Token Ring
interfaces I have are either ISA or PCMCIA, both of which are very
much obsolete technologies.  I have a PCI Token Ring interface for
which FreeBSD used to have a driver which I haven't managed to
port.  I also have an SBus Token Ring interface.  I'm not aware of
any drivers for it.  However, plain PCI and SBus are also obsolete
technologies.

}-- End of excerpt from Lloyd Parkes