LAN Turns 30, May Not See 40?

dratcw writes "The first commercial LAN was based on ARCnet technology and was installed some 30 years ago, according to a ComputerWorld article. Bob Metcalfe, one of the co-inventors of Ethernet, recalls the early battles between the different flavors of LAN and says some claims from the Token Ring backers such as IBM were lies. 'I know that sounds nasty, but for 10 years I had to put up with that crap from the IBM Token Ring people — you bet I'm bitter.' Besides dipping into networking nostalgia, the article also quotes an analyst who says the LAN may be nearing its demise and predicts that all machines will be individually connected to one huge WAN at gigabit speeds. Could the LAN actually be nearing the end of its lifecycle?"

Comments

As long as the need for a secure network exists...

[riseoftheindividual]

... the lan isn't going to disappear, at least not in 10 years. Can you imagine IBM, a defense corp, a huge pharma, etc... ditching their lans for wireless? yeah right, not any time soon.

LAN or WAN

[lthown]

doesn't matter what you want to call it, two computers connected to a local router/hub is a LOCAL area network.

going away?

[gEvil (beta)]

Could the LAN actually be nearing the end of its lifecycle?

Not as long as they let me control my own home network...

Re:As long as the need for a secure network exists

[HornWumpus]

It's not LAN vs wireless, it's LAN vs WAN.

Running a WAN without using LANs throughout is nonsense. IIRC a WAN is just bridged LANs by definition. Proposing that all the LANs will have one node is just silly.

Typical Bob Metcalfe of recent years. The man has lost it. Granted I haven't bothered reading anything he's written in a few years.

Every doorway opens onto a freeway?

[dazedNconfuzed]

That reasoning amounts to expecting every doorway from every room to open onto a major automotive freeway.

LANs will survive indefinitely precisely because sometimes your data is just feet or yards away ... and because even Internet backbones can't handle the load of routing data for everyone's personal networked printers, storage servers, and media terminals.

Re:Well, could it?

[sm62704]

I agree, it's a stupid statement. Ethernet may be superceded by newer technologies, but there will always be uses for a local network.

Some networks, for example, should never be connected to the internet in any way.

Re:WAN, SCHMAN

[snowraver1]

I think that the author is suggesting that each device will have it's own address (IPv6) and will be connected to the internet directly (possibly VIA shared modem, but with unique addresses). Sure you might only have one pipe coming into your house, but each device has a direct connection to the internet.

That being said, I completely disagree with the author. There is no way that companies want to put all thier servers (not to mention clients) directly on the Internet. Firewalls will always exist for security reasons, and thus so will LANs.