Comment by hnlmorg
3 days ago
> Coax connectors for Token Ring did exist, but were more common on Ethernet networks.
I don’t disbelieve the author here but anecdotally the only time I’ve worked with coax BNC plugs for networking is with TR. And it be never seen a TR network in the wild that wasn’t coax.
It’s interesting to read that other cable types existed for TR.
Conversely, the only time I've worked with coax BNC plugs for networking was with 10BASE2 ethernet (aka "thinnet" and also "that stupid broken thing").
That was just one long, shared transmission line that happened with RG-58 coax. Each end was terminated with a 50 Ohm resistor. There was no central brain-box or hub. All nodes were peers.
Nodes could be inserted on an existing run by bisecting the coax at any random point, terminating the bare ends with BNC male connectors, and plugging those into a BNC T connector which ultimately connected to a NIC. Doing this brought down the entire network segment in unison until it was reconnected.
In fact, any discontinuity in the transmission line brought down the entire network segment.
So when Bob in Accounting decides to move his PC to a different spot on his desk and breaks the transmission line? The network dips out completely, and without any good tools for a IT folks to pinpoint exactly where that break happened.
Fun times. (Except: It actually was kind of fun for homelab-type stuff when 10BASE-T twisted-pair networks were still kind of expensive. Adding more nodes just meant installing more connectors and maybe extending the line. Now we just add another magical non-blocking N-way $15 gigabit network switch wherever, or skip it all and use wifi.)
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I've never worked with Token Ring at all. If I ever even saw it in the wild, I did not recognize it as such.
I do remember the flame wars about it, though.
Thinnet is known as 10BASE2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2
The "T" in 10BASE-T signifies "twisted pair", which isn't the coaxial in thinnet.
Yeah, it is. I even Googled it to make sure I got the hyphenization (or lack thereof) right, and then I still successfully screwed up the actually-distinguishing part.
Corrected. Thanks!
I think we spent more time in the computer lab in middle school running NET SEND and then imperceptibly loosening the coax on the back of our machine to take the network down than doing the actual exercises we were supposed to do
Thanks for sharing. That sounds a lot like my experiences as well so now I’m wondering if I’m misremembering those networks as TR (it was a generation ago).
I think you are misremembering.
Coax Ethernet with BNC connectors was absolutely the norm for LANs from the late 1980s to mid 1990s. Then, slowly, UTP took over, as 10base-2 was replaced by 10base-T, then 100base-T, then switches instead of hubs, then Gigabit Ethernet: 1000base-T.
I worked with Token Ring in the '80s and never ever even heard of a coax version. It was D9 connectors on the card to fat IBM connectors on the MAU, as pictured here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_access_unit
I think you're switching TR and thinnet Ethernet in your head.
All the tokenring in use at the bank I worked at in the mid-90s was twisted pair.
I faintly recall that some of the older systems used the 9pin connectors.
And the first home ethernet I set up was BNC.