Token Ring and Ethernet converge
John Kristoff
PRESS RELEASE
Hewitt Associates Develops EtherRing Technology
Lincolnshire, IL - May 22, 1998 -- In a remarkable feat of technical
ingenuity, network experts from the consulting firm of Hewitt Associates
announced EtherRing today. EtherRing, is a technology that allows ethernet
and token ring components to interoperate together without hardware
upgrades.
Hewitt Associates is a large token ring shop with over 5000 nodes. Industry
pressure has been forcing them to consider and adopt ethernet technology
over the past few years. Although there has been serious discussion and
debate about converting to fast ethernet on the desktop, the consulting firm
has largely remained on token ring for the immediate future. "What has
really been driving our decision to avoid ethernet to the desktop is the
need to support legacy LU 6.2 applications, requiring source routing
support" says Ben Spizzirri, one of the key drivers of the EtherRing
technology. "With the large number of LU 6.2 sessions that we need to
support, any other option but token ring and source routing has made the
thought of a transition to ethernet a tricky one."
"The solution is actually so strikingly simple, it amazes us that no one has
thought of this before" commented Jon Bohacz, a router guru at the
consulting firm. "This truly ends the token ring versus ethernet war
forever." According to the collection of networking professionals at
Hewitt, a 'shim' can be added to the protocol stack to provide the key
ingredient for token ring and ethernet operability. John Kristoff, a
network expert with Hewitt Associates described how this shim worked for
industry analysts.
"We were able to exploit a relatively unknown capability of ethernet and
token ring adapter cards. Token ring uses the differential manchester
coding scheme while ethernet uses regular manchester encoding. However,
with software, we are able to set a adapter register to change the encoding
scheme from one method to the other. In addition, our programming team,
lead by Chris Johnson, coded the shim to provide services via a breakpoint
mechanism."
Chris Johnson says, "Whenever a conversion from one topology to another is
required our software will allow a ethernet card to emulate token ring in
order to provide phantom voltage, issue tokens and handle all the necessary
MAC layer functions. The shim for the token ring card works in a opposite
manner when plugged into a ethernet network. We've been able to demonstrate
this software on the Windows 98 and NT platforms, but there's certainly no
reason it couldn't be ported to other operating systems or network devices."
Robert Love of IBM and current chairman of the IBM 802.5 committee issued a
brief statement about this breakthough technology shortly John Kristoff's
presentation. "We're pleased to see such an innovative solution for token
ring networks, however we at the IEEE are hestitant to pledge our support
until we have had the chance to study the technology in a real world
scenario."
Kevin Tolly, an independent analyst and president of The Tolly Group said
Robert Love and company have their own work to protect as well as the
expected income for future high speed token ring products. "If Hewitt
releases the EtherRing spec to the public domain, this will undermine the
position of those working on the new high speed token ring initiatives"
claimed Tolly.
Initial tests are proving that the Hewitt technology has a good chance to
put a nail in the 802.5 committee's efforts, or at the very least give users
a cost effective alternative. Rumors are abound with proposed acceptance of
EtherRing by the big three networking vendors Cisco, Bay Networks and 3Com,
but all refused comment.
Although a boon for token ring shops, what will the EtherRing technology do
for existing ethernet users? "Nothing at all", says Steve McCollum, lead
network engineer and propeller head with Hewitt Associates. "The wonderful
part is that no matter what you use, you can keep on using it. We think
this really gives those who want to take advantage of the token ring
protocol with the cheaper ethernet equipment the best of both worlds."
David Pierce, who oversees the team at Hewitt had this to say about the
future of EtherRing, "although there are some issues with packet sizes as
well as management functions to work out, we see this as our best long term
solution while we have both ethernet and token ring products. Currently,
EtherRing will only support switched environments, but it would be
relatively easy to add support for shared media environments. In fact, we
anticipate that by December of this year, we will be able to simply plug in
any adapter, be it token ring or ethernet, and it will just simply work. No
matter where you are, who you are or what technology you prefer to use."
Those words speak loudly for token ring vendors. Robert Love shot back, "We
are unfettered with EtherRing. Existing token ring customers want solutions
that are proven in the market and they want support for when there are
problems."
For over 50 years, Hewitt Associates has been the premier providing of
benefits, human resources and actuarial services to companies all over the
world. The company has more than 70 offices worldwide and over 7000
associates. For further information send a e-mail with the subject line,
"info" to in...@etherring.org.
Spoof News, Copyright 1998 - Don't Believe Everything You Read
S.B.
John Kristoff wrote:
>
> PRESS RELEASE
>
> Hewitt Associates Develops EtherRing Technology
>
<snipage>
Huh???.
OK - never mind.
Hmmm - month is May; eleven months early on this
one (or a month late).
--
What happens if a big asteroid hits the Earth?
Judging from realistic simulations involving a
sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we
can assume it will be pretty bad.
- Dave Barry
-
(All views expressed are my own opinion)