ARCnet

ARCnet or also known in the networking world as ARCNET is an acronym for Attached Resource Computer NETwork. This ARCnet is basically a LAN or Local Area Network protocol which performs a function which is similar to the Ethernet and Token Ring. The date of production or the announcement for this protocol dates quite back, to the late 70’s that is 1977. The work on this protocol was completed in 1976 by the principal development engineer John Murphy who worked at the corporation named Datapoint, but the announcement of this protocol was made, as mentioned above, in the next year that is 1977.

In the start to deal with the problem of clustering in the network the developers and the networking companies of that time made expensive software and protocols which could help make a cluster of the computer and deal with it, however, the limitation with those protocols were that they were applicable and usable only at the place in the network where the cluster was made up of homogenous computers and along with another drawback was that those software and protocols were quite expensive and not every business could afford those. However, this all changed with the completion of the ARCnet, as it is a loosely-coupled LAN-based clustering solution, which made no assumption on the type of the computers that were connecting to the network and because of this a cluster of different computers could also be made easily.

This protocol is based on the token-ring architecture; however, it can perform quite better than that. It has the data rate up to 2.5 Mbps and it can connect to 255 computer maximum at any given time. Apart of these factors some other plus points are that it can permit various different types of transmission media to be mixed on the same network without any compatibility problem.