Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mit-eddie!bu-cs!mirror!frog!cpoint!martillo
From: martillo@cpoint.UUCP (martillo)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: TCP/IP over FDDI
Message-ID: <1413@cpoint.UUCP>
Date: 5 Dec 88 08:28:00 GMT
References: <21741@sgi.SGI.COM> 
Reply-To: martillo@cpoint.UUCP (martillo)
Organization: Clearpoint Research Corp., Hopkinton Mass.
Lines: 24

The mac-header size seems really perverted but isn't this issue
really larger than just choosing a disgusting header size.

Why do mac level addresses have to be so large?  Why does each
card have to have a unique mac address (not just for FDDI but
apparently for the who 802.x technologies).  IP or IP equivalent
addresses need to be unique.  But making physical layer addresses
unique for the known universe is a waste of time.  Better to have
some authority on a given lan which assigns the locally significant
mac layer addresses.  Then 2 bytes would be sufficient.  How many
lans have more than 64k hosts on them?

The real problem is that the IEEE with total misunderstanding
views 802.2 which is a communications subnet protocol
as an end-to-end protocol.  To make the problem worse, 802.2 type
2 is based on LAPB which is a communications subnet access protocol.

FDDI has added complexity because the FDDI committee refuses
to accept that host with a dual mac FDDI controller is really
attached to two separate physical networks and not one physical
network (at least as I understand the current proposals).

Joachim Carlo Santos Martillo