LINC network

[jcp at BRL-TGR.ARPA]

From:      Joe Pistritto <jcp at BRL-TGR.ARPA>

I just had a chance to talk to the President of International High-Tech
(Ann Arbor, Michigan) about a new networking product they are offering:

	LINC - a network system from Europe.

Basically its a 5MB end-to-end link, with up to 255 stations, one of which
(at any time), is the 'master' station.  The master can then DMA blocks of
up to 65535 words to/from any of the 'slave' modules.  There is a means
via software to change masters, each card has the smarts to be both master
and slave.  When DMAing, they apparently achieve very close to 5MB thruput,
(I'd believe it, as its basically a wire at that point).  There is manchester
encoding of the data onto a coax line, with 'tap boxes' that provide (via
transformers) up to 5KV of isolation between stations.

It's NOT a general purpose packet type network, but I could think of
applications where it would be very effective.  Does anyone have any
experience with this product?  (Although the company in Ann Arbor is
just introducing it, the claim 70 installations in Europe and a few
test sites in the US).  They also claim to have RSX (ugh), and VMS
software to use the thing, and DECNET support (small ugh).

						-JCP-