what about 48 bits?

Wed Apr 7 10:43:41 UTC 2010

In article <201004071023.o37ANtww018405 at aurora.sol.net>, Joe Greco 
<jgreco at ns.sol.net> writes

>>interoperability and backwards  compatibility were the tipping points.
>
>Ah, yes, backwards compatibility: implementing the fantastic feature of
>breaking the network...

By "backwards compatibility" I mean the ability to use the new LAN from 
a laptop that didn't have an Ethernet connection built in, and didn't 
have an optional [proprietary] internal Ethernet card available either.

Later on, of course, you would get PCMCIA cards and USB dongles rather 
than Centronics-port dongles. But the market for these remained 
dominated by the Ethernet standard, rather than others.

>we all remember the fun of what happened when
>someone incorrectly unhooked a 10base2 network segment; D-Link managed
>to one-up that on the theoretically more-robust 10baseT/UTP by
>introducing a card that'd break your network when you powered off the
>attached PC.

That tale of woe doesn't really sound like it's the fault of backwards 
compatibility. Didn't the operational status of the LAX immigration 
department fall to zero for almost a whole day, once; as a result of a 
rogue network card crashing the LAN?
-- 
Roland Perry