From: mike@hprnd.rose.hp.com (Mike Haag) Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 18:12:44 GMT Subject: 100BaseVG Information Message-ID: <6700069@hprnd.rose.hp.com> Organization: HP Roseville Networks Division Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans.ethernet Lines: 696 Attached is the press release and backgrounder for 100Base-VG. These are the appropriate documents to send out if you receive requests for 100Base-VG information. The backgrounder is also available via HP First (800-333-1917) category 7509. HP, AT&T MICROELECTRONICS PROPOSE TECHNOLOGY TO INCREASE NETWORK SPEED BY TENFOLD USING EXISTING CABLE Leading Computer, Networking, Software Companies Support HP/AT&T Efforts PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 12, 1992 -- Hewlett-Packard Company and AT&T Microelectronics today revealed details of their technology proposal to create an industry standard that would enable computer users on popular Ethernet* networks to share information 10 times faster than they can now. The proposal to an IEEE* committee is based on technology jointly developed by HP and AT&T Microelectronics. The companies believe this technology is the first that enables customers to use standard office cable, known as voice-grade cable, to achieve transmission rates of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbits/s), the equivalent of transmitting 2,500 pages per second. By increasing transmission speeds over existing cable, the new technology enables customers to improve dramatically the effectiveness of their computer networks without having to reinvest in new cable -- typically the most expensive part of a network. As a result, business, scientific and engineering customers could expand their networking power significantly and cost effectively over the next 10 years to accommodate advances in data-intensive applications, such as computer-aided engineering, imaging and multimedia. This is the first viable technology capable of providing real-time, interactive video to the desktop, the companies said. It also enhances network security. More important, this technology is transparent to network operating systems and applications, so it does not require any changes to existing software. Leading computer-systems, networking and software companies support HP and AT&T's objectives, including Apple Computer Inc., Banyan Systems Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., David Systems Inc., HP's Workstation Group, Microsoft(R) Corp., NCR, Novell and Wellfleet Communications. Immediate Benefits "This technology is a real breakthrough," said Michael Howard, president of Infonetics Research Inc., a San Jose-based market-research firm. "It offers the possibility of a reasonably priced `next-generation Ethernet' for workgroups at 10 times the current bandwidth." Users can upgrade relatively simply and inexpensively to the new standard by connecting their existing wiring to a new network module, called a hub, and replacing the adapters in the workstations on the network. Technology Advances Two technology advances in HP and AT&T's proposal, Quartet Signaling and Demand Priority protocol, expand the capacity of voice-grade cable to meet application needs of the 1990s. While first-generation technologies transmit on only one of the cable's four wire pairs, Quartet Signaling transmission technology expands that capacity by transmitting simultaneously on all four wire pairs. The new Demand Priority access method supports emerging time-sensitive applications, such as video and multimedia. This approach manages and allocates access to the network centrally, at a hub, rather than from individual workstations. It provides "guaranteed bandwidth," the capability for applications to transmit information reliably and continuously. "Compared to first-generation Ethernet, HP's and AT&T's approach offers a more efficient utilization of network bandwidth," said Frank Dzubeck, president of the Washington, D.C.-based market-research firm Communications Network Architects Inc. Demand Priority protocol's hub-centric method also provides link privacy, an enhanced security feature. Link privacy means that data is sent from a workstation directly to the hub and not to all the other workstations on the network, as other approaches require. A Standard Based on Standards HP has a strong history of setting industry standards. Initial HP Laboratories' research into transmission capabilities led to what the company believes was the first implementation of Ethernet over voice-grade cable. HP submitted this technology to the IEEE 802.3 standards committee, which adopted this approach as the 10Base-T network standard. HP's new, high-speed technology is an evolutionary extension of 10Base-T. AT&T has been active in IEEE 802.3 standards efforts since the 1980s. AT&T developed the technique for pre-equalizing 10Base-T Ethernet signals, ensuring reliable transmission over unshielded twisted-pair cable. AT&T Microelectronics develops and markets a wide range of semiconductor and electronic components and solutions for applications in networked computing, wireless, telecommunications and advanced consumer electronics industries worldwide, and possesses deep resources in design tools and standard cell ASICs. Hewlett-Packard Company is an international manufacturer of measurement and computation products and systems recognized for excellence in quality and support. The company's products and services are used in industry, business, engineering, science, medicine and education in approximately 100 countries. HP has 90,900 employees and had revenue of $14.5 billion in its 1991 fiscal year. # # # Ethernet is the most-widely installed type of network; it transfers data at the rate of 10 Mbits/s. IEEE stands for Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a worldwide standards-setting body. SUPPORT FOR HP/AT&T 100Base-VG OBJECTIVES "Apple Computer Inc. sees the trend to increase the bandwidth of the pipeline to desktop systems as a parallel evolution to the increasingly media-rich applications that are arising on the desktop. The ability to efficiently transmit megabytes of information from servers over networks will become a driving issue as data-types transcend simple text into the realm of multimedia -- with voice, animation, still photography and motion pictures making up complex documents. Apple believes that the initiative for the proposed 100 Mbits/s Ethernet standard will be an important technology for the future once it has been through the rigorous review process of the IEEE 802.3 Committee standards body." John Nauman Senior Director, Integration Technologies Group Enterprise Systems Division Apple Computer "The ability to increase data transmission rates using inexpensive Type-3 wiring, such as found in most business installations today, will enable exciting new classes of application solutions -- including full-motion video and high-resolution graphics -- while leveraging customers' existing network investments. We applaud Hewlett-Packard's leadership in proposing this new standard and in moving to open the technology to the market." Bill Johnson Vice President, Product Marketing Banyan Systems Incorporated "The Hewlett-Packard 100 Mbits to the desktop proposal is one that, if adopted, will bring a new level of performance to client server computing. At Cisco we believe that standards should be developed for these kinds of technologies, therefore allowing multivendor participation and interoperability in the shortest possible time. Customers would benefit from the increase in performance at the desktop, enabling a new level of applications to be developed." Frank J. Marshall V.P. Engineering Cisco Systems, Inc. "David Systems Incorporated views the Hewlett-Packard and AT&T Microelectronics proposal as an extremely important advance in the evolution of local area networking. The mere fact of 100 Mbits/s to the desktop is not the key issue -- a number of technologies can deliver this. The real issue is a solution that is cost-effective, can be implemented without wholesale change to the wiring infrastructure, and will be readily accepted by systems integrators and end users. We believe their proposal presents such a solution." Curt Wheeling Vice President of Marketing David Systems Incorporated "HP workstations are already pushing existing Ethernet networks to the limit. This breakthrough will enable networks to keep up with the advances in the dynamic workstation marketplace. As a leading supplier of workstations that excel in both raw performance and price/performance, HP is a natural choice to lead the way in high-speed networks." Gary B. Eichhorn General Manager, Workstation Systems Group Hewlett-Packard Company "We believe that the major thrust in the next few years is going to be in workgroup computing. The 100-Mbits/s Ethernet proposal from HP matches our aim of making it easier for users to work together and will provide greater performance to Windows for Workgroup Users. The greater networking speed that customers gain will help them take advantage of even more Microsoft software features, and will enable them to share information in all its forms including data, graphics, sound and multimedia, bringing additional benefits to workgroup users. Paul Maritz Senior Vice President Systems Software Division Microsoft Corporation "Novell is committed to reducing the overall network costs while encouraging the growing number of networked applications available to the customer. Novell believes a low-cost, high-speed solution that is a natural outgrowth of today's popular 10Base-T networks is necessary for performance-intensive applications, such as multimedia and imaging. The HP/AT&T goals for 100-Mbits/s Ethernet to the desktop are right on target to meet customer needs today and well into the future." John Edwards Executive Vice President, Desktop Systems Group Novell "Wellfleet's new Backbone Node, with aggregate system performance of 480,000 pps, was developed in anticipation of higher performance local-area-network technology. The HP proposal is good news for Wellfleet's large installed base and the industry as a whole. Users can preserve the investments they've made in existing equipment while implementing a high performance, low-cost solution for bringing bandwidth-intensive applications to the desktop." Michael Grady Vice President Engineering Wellfleet Communications # # # ....................................................................... 100BASE-VG A potential new local-area-networking standard, 100Base-VG incorporates 100-megabits-per-second (Mbits/s) data transmission over voice-grade unshielded twisted-pair cabling. (In the name, "100" represents the transmission speed; "VG" represents "voice-grade" cabling.) Based on technologies jointly developed by Hewlett-Packard Company and AT&T Microelectronics, the proposed 100Base-VG standard builds on existing 10Base-T Ethernet standards, adding higher-speed transmission and improved network control. The new technology offers user organizations a smooth upgrade path from first-generation Ethernet LANs, letting organizations leverage their existing investments in 10Base-T cabling while providing a ten-fold increase in bandwidth and enabling support for emerging time-sensitive applications, such as multimedia. INTRODUCTION The Need for High-Speed LANs Personal computers have undergone a dramatic transformation over the past 10 years. True to the high-technology tradition of "smaller, faster, cheaper," today's personal computers are 100 times more powerful and can store 100 times more information than the original IBM PC, yet they cost a small fraction of the price and can be found in notebook-size -- even checkbook-size -- packages. Software applications, too, have grown in size and sophistication; simple character-based, command-line interfaces are being supplanted by true graphical interfaces. New graphical applications are emerging as a result, including high-resolution, "true-color" applications that bring photographic-quality images and full-motion video to the desktop. During this same 10-year period, the use of local area networks (LANs) has exploded, with Ethernet networks accounting for a large majority of installations. According to International Data Corp., a market-research firm, the number of computers connected to Ethernet alone is expected to reach nearly 20 million by the end of 1992, and more than double to more than 40 million nodes by the end of 1995. Of this number, the current best-selling LAN infrastructure is 10Base-T Ethernet over voice-grade, unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cabling. However, while desktop-processor performance, storage capacity, and the data file sizes generated by more sophisticated applications have each increased more than a hundredfold, the information-carrying capacity of Ethernet LANs has remained constant at 10 Mbits/s. Although this may provide adequate performance for today's needs, the huge data volumes anticipated for graphical, image-based and multimedia applications threaten to grind these networks to a halt unless the LAN's information-carrying capacity can be boosted. Economic Realities Unfortunately, economic realities limit the options that many organizations can consider in boosting network capacity. Organizations today are under tremendous pressure to contain costs, do more with less and extend the life of their current network investments. As a result, many are reluctant to consider alternatives to upgrading their network that might require expensive upgraded components or fail to preserve the substantial investments these organizations have made in their existing network infrastructure, including architecture, cabling, network backbones and wide-area connections. With the falling cost of network components and the rising cost of labor, a significant percentage of the replacement value of existing 10Base-T networks is in the installed cabling. The cost of new cabling can run as high as $500 per desktop for installation alone, plus cable costs, particularly in older buildings and in high-labor-cost areas, not to mention the loss of organizational-productivity while the changeover is being made. Although high-speed transmission technologies have emerged from vendors or appeared before standards committees, until now these networks have been very costly to implement. Recent proposals for lower-cost 100-Mbits/s LAN technologies have surfaced as well, but all require the use of data-grade cable, a higher-cost grade of unshielded twisted-pair than the voice-grade cable found in many existing 10Base-T networks. These proposals thus imply that 10Base-T users considering higher- performance LANs would have to abandon their significant investments in 10Base-T wiring and incur the cost of installing more expensive cabling. 100BASE-VG 100Base-VG is a potential new local-area- networking standard designed to enable 100-Mbits/s data transmission over voice-grade or higher grades of unshielded twisted-pair cabling. Specifically designed for workgroup environments, 100Base-VG builds on the best features of existing 10Base-T Ethernet standards, adding higher-speed transmission and improved network control. As a result, this new technology provides a smooth upgrade path from first-generation Ethernet LANs, allowing organizations to leverage their existing investments in 10Base-T cabling while providing a tenfold increase in transmission speed and enabling support for emerging bandwidth-intensive and delay-sensitive applications such as multimedia. Easy Upward Migration Most LANs today are implemented using a star topology with intelligent hubs or concentrators managing individual connections to each desktop. A building or campuswide backbone system links these individual star clusters into an integrated network. 100Base-VG supports this architecture, with unconditional support for all of the implementations of 10Base-T -- including the full wiring specifications, cable distances, cable bundles and connectors. As a result, migrating an existing 10Base-T Ethernet LAN installation to a 100-Mbits/s 100Base-VG LAN is a simple, two-step process. First, in the wiring closet, a new high-speed LAN concentrator module is installed and connected to the existing backbone wiring. The twisted-pair cables coming from each computer being upgraded are moved from their existing connections and plugged into the new 100Base-VG concentrator ports. This is all done inside the wiring closet. Second, high-speed 100Base-VG LAN adapters and drivers replace the existing adapters in each computer being upgraded. No new cable needs to be installed. Migration can be phased in easily by individual computers or entire workgroups, facilitating a graceful, gradual and flexible changeover as performance demands and budgets allow. 100Base-VG subnetworks can connect easily to existing 10-Mbits/s Ethernet networks using a 100:10 speed-matching bridge, or to existing 16-Mbits/s Token Ring backbones or subnets using a router. For higher-speed backbones, 100Base-VG networks also can be connected to 100-Mbits/s FDDI* backbones using an encapsulating bridge or a router. Variations on any of these approaches also are possible, including "collapsed" backbones implemented using routers. MIS directors and LAN administrators will appreciate that 100Base-VG preserves their current investments in voice-grade or data-grade wiring, as well as their investments in backbone architecture and wide-area connections. By simplifying their migration to this high-speed LAN, 100Base-VG lowers organizations' overall costs of increasing performance for their end-users, as well as providing an excellent foundation for satisfying high-speed application needs for years to come. TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES As a natural follow-on to the existing 10Base-T and Ethernet standards, 100Base-VG retains the best elements of its predecessors, including the Ethernet packet format, and the star topology, structured cabling and connectors of the 10Base-T specification. 100Base-VG makes technology advances in the key areas of signaling and media access to support higher-speed transmission, improved throughput and advanced applications such as multimedia. Quartet Signaling 100Base-VG's Quartet Signaling transmission technology is one of two complementary and related technologies that are key to the reliable delivery of 100-Mbits/s performance over unshielded voice-grade cable. Unlike the original 10Base-T approach, which uses two pairs of wires (one for transmitting data and another for receiving), 100Base-VG's Quartet Signaling uses all four pairs of wires in a 10Base-T cable to transmit or receive information. This approach, coupled with a more efficient data encoding technique, lets 100Base-VG deliver 10 times the information throughput while using essentially the same frequencies as today's 10-Mbits/s 10Base-T Ethernet. Previous approaches for transmitting 100-Mbits/s data had been hampered by their use of substantially higher signal frequencies. By lowering the required signal frequencies, Quartet Signaling lets 100Base-VG fully support voice-grade as well as data-grade UTP, permits the use of lower-cost electronics, and avoids the radio-frequency emissions and susceptibility problems that hampered earlier approaches to high-speed data transmission over UTP. Demand Priority Access Method The Demand Priority access method is the second of the two technologies that let 100Base-VG reliably deliver 100-Mbits/s performance over unshielded voice-grade cable. Demand Priority eliminates the need for an end node to receive at the same time as it transmits, freeing up all four wire pairs and permitting the use of Quartet Signaling. First-generation Ethernet was initially a bus-topology network and required significant intelligence at each node to manage access to the shared media. As an evolution of the original Ethernet, 10Base-T had the inherent network- management advantages of star-topology networks and implemented a hub-oriented architecture. In a hub-oriented, star-topology network, links between each node and the hub are essentially point-to-point links. However, in keeping with the original Ethernet, 10Base-T retained the function of managing access to the network in each of the connected nodes. Performing this function meant that nodes had to listen to the network while they transmitted packets, requiring dedicated wire pairs for each function. 100Base-VG goes a step beyond 10Base-T in fully leveraging the potential of hub-centric, star-topology networks by centralizing the function of managing and allocating access to the network within the hub, rather than in each of the connected nodes. This new access method, called Demand Priority, simplifies the intelligence required at each node, while at the same time providing better control and utilization of the bandwidth of the network. With Demand Priority, a node wishing to transmit a packet over the network first indicates its request to the intelligent hub. At the same time, the node requests a level of service -- either normal or high priority. If the network is otherwise idle, the hub acknowledges requests from the attached nodes as they are received. The transmitting node then begins sending its packet to the hub. The hub immediately directs the packet on the fly to the appropriate destination, based on the address information contained in the packet. In this way, packets are shuttled from source to destination with low latency and minimal delay. If more than one request is received simultaneously, the hub services the higher-priority request first. If multiple requests of the same priority occur, the hub services each request in turn, allocating the available bandwidth equally among nodes. Guaranteed Bandwidth The Demand Priority access method enables the overall throughput of a 100Base-VG network to approach 100 percent of the full media bandwidth. In first-generation Ethernet networks, performance tends to degrade as usage levels increase, due to the statistical nature of their CSMA/CD access technique. Using Demand Priority, the throughput of 100Base-VG networks increases uniformly until the hub itself reaches saturation, when the hub is switching packets back-to-back continuously. With the Demand Priority approach, the hub can provide guaranteed bandwidth to critical applications when those applications request the high-priority level of service. Regardless of other normal-priority traffic, the hub acknowledges and passes high-priority packets as they are received. By controlling the number of nodes requesting high-priority service, high-bandwidth applications -- multimedia and interactive video, for example -- can be ensured a continual stream of information between source and destination regardless of other traffic or events on the network, up to the full bandwidth of the network. Enhanced Security Because the Demand Priority approach uses the hub as a packet switch rather than as a repeater, conversations between an originating node, the hub and a destination node are not broadcast to any other nodes. As a result, the Demand Priority approach automatically provides a level of Link Privacy that prevents eavesdropping from any other device connected to another network port. This contrasts sharply with first-generation Ethernet and token ring networks, where transmissions are broadcast to all network nodes in addition to the intended destination. Long-Standing Commitment to Standards 100Base-VG represents the fruit of long-standing Hewlett-Packard Company and AT&T Microelectronics research efforts into the transmission capabilities of voice-grade UTP wiring. In the mid-1980s, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories provided much of the initial technology behind the original 10Base-T proposal for transmitting 10-Mbits/s Ethernet over voice-grade UTP. Through HP's leadership in the IEEE 802.3 standards committee, this approach was rapidly adopted as the 10Base-T standard. Less than five years after HP proposed its technology to the IEEE, 10Base-T has become the best-selling LAN approach and the preferred choice for LANs in many regions around the world. HP is currently the market-share leader in workgroup 10Base-T hubs with its HP EtherTwist line of networking products. A natural follow-on to 10Base-T, 100Base-VG reflects HP and AT&T's continued research to build on the successes of 10Base-T. With their proposal, HP and AT&T offer their jointly-developed technology for reliably delivering 100 Mbits/s performance over the same voice-grade UTP media as 10Base-T. 100Base-VG promises a cost-effective, standards-based, high-performance network solution that accommodates user's growing needs today and through the remainder of the decade. # # # FDDI stands for fiber distributed data interface.