From: rochkind@basepath.com (Marc Rochkind)
Subject: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2017 09:52:27 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAOkr1zU+3Au_OOhCw21GDBPoXDZXCYLHxw79vjYEQpHGVo3jhA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20170116164421.GJ6647@mcvoy.com>
If you think AT&T looked askance at cheap networking, you can imagine what
they thought of cheap telephones. When I interviewed in early 1970 at
Columbus, I recall one of the engineers joking that you'd have to buy one
of those "imitation" phones at a discount store, as if that vision was
enough to kill off the idea.
On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 9:44 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:00:00AM -0500, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> > The highest levels of AT&T were happy to carry digital data, but
> > did not see digital as significant business. Even though digital T1
> > was the backbone of long-distance transmission, it was IBM, not
> > AT&T, that offered direct digital interfaces to T1 in the 60s.
>
> AT&T seemed pretty clueless about networking. I gave a short talk at Hot
> Interconnects in the heyday of ATM. Paul Borrill got me a speaking spot,
> I wasn't well known person but inside of Sun I had been railing against
> ATM and pushing for 100Mbit ethernet and Paul decided to see what the
> rest of the world thought.
>
> The gist of my talk was that ATM was a joke. I had an ATM card (on loan
> from Sun Networking), I think it was 155 Mbit card. I also had an
> ethernet card that I had bought at Fry's on my way to the talk.
> The ATM card cost $4000. The ethernet card cost $49 IIRC.
>
> The point I was making was that ATM was doomed. This was at the time in
> history when every company was making long bets on ATM, they all thought
> it was the future; well, all meaning the execs had been convinced.
>
> I held up the two cards, disclosed the cost, and said "this ATM card is
> always going to be expensive but the ethernet card is gonna be $10 in
> a year or two. Why? Volume. Every computer has ethernet, it's gonna
> do nothing but get cheaper. And you're gonna see ethernet over fiber,
> long haul, you're going to see 100 Mbit, gigabit ethernet, and it's
> going to be cheap. ATM is going nowhere."
>
> There was a shocked silence. Weirdest talk ever, the room just went
> silent for what seemed forever. Then someone, I'm sure it was an engineer
> who had been forced to work on ATM, started clapping. Just one guy.
> And then the whole room joined in.
>
> I took the silence as "yeah, but my boss says I have to" and the clapping
> as "we agree".
>
> At the time AT&T was the biggest pusher of ATM. Telephone switches were
> big and expensive and it was clear, to me at least, that AT&T looked at
> all those cheap ethernet switches and said "yeah, let's get the industry
> working on phone switching and we'll get cheap switches too". Nice idea,
> didn't work out.
>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2017-01-16 16:52 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <mailman.1.1484532001.2693.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
2017-01-16 16:00 ` Doug McIlroy
2017-01-16 16:22 ` Marc Rochkind
2017-01-16 16:44 ` Larry McVoy
2017-01-16 16:52 ` Marc Rochkind [this message]
2017-01-16 19:17 ` Steve Johnson
2017-01-16 19:21 ` Larry McVoy
2017-01-16 19:57 ` Ken Thompson
2017-01-16 23:41 ` Tim Bradshaw
2017-01-16 23:45 ` Brantley Coile
2017-01-17 4:07 ` Jason Stevens
2017-01-17 5:22 ` William Corcoran
2017-01-17 11:43 ` Jason Stevens
2017-01-17 14:27 ` Joerg Schilling
2017-01-17 14:21 ` Joerg Schilling
2017-01-16 19:46 Noel Chiappa
2017-01-17 0:30 ` Brad Spencer
2017-01-17 15:32 Noel Chiappa
2017-01-18 14:29 ` Paul Ruizendaal
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