Milestone-Proposal talk:IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standard Committee

Edits for Milestone-Proposal:IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standard Committee -- GeoffT (talk) 03:23, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? Yes Change to: No. Action Item: Get letter from SCV Section (chair via Brian to take responsibility)

Plaque citation summarizing the achievement and its significance: INSERT TEXT (68 WORDS): In February, 1980 individuals from various industries met in the Bay Area at the (now demolished) Jack Tar Hotel to standardize Local Area Networks (LAN) for computers.

IEEE 802 was established and created standards that transformed the nature of computing. In particular: 802.3 (Ethernet), 802.5 (Token Ring), and 802.11 (WiFi) made communication between mainframes, all personal computers, laptops and, later, smartphones something that could be taken for granted.

IEEE section(s) monitoring the plaque(s): Fill in: No. Action Item: Get letter from SCV Section (chair via Brian to take responsibility)

Street address(es) and GPS coordinates of the intended milestone plaque site(s): Fill in: Computer History Museum, 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94043 37.4142744, -122.077409

Please give the address(es) of the plaque site(s) (GPS coordinates if you have them). Also please give the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc. If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give the contact information visitors will need. Fill in: Museum whose scope is appropriate to LAN technology and its application space. There are other historical markers already at this site. See Dedications #159 and #196 Site 2. Are the original buildings extant? Fill in: No. Details of the plaque mounting: Fill in: The plaque will be mounted outside on the brick wall enclosing the entrance garden next to the other IEEE Milestones. How is the site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public? Fill in: The plaque will be mounted outdoors in the enclosed entrance garden which is visiblle from the reception desk. The reception desk is manned by museum staff when the museum is open. However, the site is open to the public 24/7. Who is the present owner of the site(s)? Fill in:

Computer History Museum

What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)? Fill in:

The work of 802 had broad participation and buy in from many vendors, both of smaller computers and from independent manufacturers of communications interfaces for those computers. The goal was multi-vendor interoperable communication between multiple customer systems at high speed, largely in a local or campus context.

What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome? Fill in: Previous to that point in time most computer to computer communication was proprietary and was orientated to the 4kHz bandwidth of a telephone voice channel. The challenge was to change the orientation to a multi-vendor, multi-station network that opperated at high speed in a context oriented to a local facility, in particular to overcome the industry's entrenched proprietary bias. What features set this work apart from similar achievements? Fill in: The major products in the market that were similar were ArcNET which was largely limited to word processors and was proprietary and IEEE-488 which was specific to laboratory instruments and was oriented to bench top use. 802 LANs were general purpose, multi-vendor and had much longer reach the IEEE-488.