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Networking Technologies

The networking technologies offered by vendors at SuperComputing-94 included, but were not limited to:

HiPPI, ATM, FDDI, and 10 megabit-per-second Ethernet were offered as networking technologies in the SCinet `94, the SuperComputing '94 show net. SCinet `94 was advertised as the most advanced show net anywhere --- a viable claim, because this show network did offer true gigabit-per-second (1.6 gigabit-per-second per link) local area networks built upon Dual-HiPPI. A diagram of SCinet'94 is provided in figure 1. This network could be compared to the show net of Interop+Networld in Atlanta in September 1994, where HiPPI saw little use as a networking technology and claims of gigabit networking technologies generally were ATM-based or Frame-relay-based, often operating only at OC-3 data rates (155 megabit-per-second). Gigabit-per-second data rate claims for these networks generally arise from the opinion that Broadband Integrated Services Data Network (BISDN) technology and fiber-optic-based Sonet technology will eventually scale to gigabit speeds.

 
Figure 1: SCinet'94 (Scanned from a handout) 



David P. Koester
Sun Oct 22 13:05:27 EDT 1995