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Re: Big B, little b




Colleagues,

I do not understand why this is all being discussed, much less at this length.
The abbreviation for octet into 10 bit block coding was established in P802.3z.
That decision is entrenched throughout the existing IEEE Std. 802.3 as 
"8B/10B".
The current project, P802.3ae (tail), is an Amendment to IEEE Standard 
802.3 2000 Edition (dog).

Dog wags tail.
Tail does not wag dog.

I have heard nothing to make me believe otherwise.
We get points with the world for how little we change, not how much.

Geoff


At 07:14 AM 11/28/00 -0500, Mark Ritter wrote:

>Some history might help to resolve this thread.
>The '8B/10B' acronym demonstrably does not trace back to IBM. We simply
>adopted  the code classification scheme mX/nY which had been widely used in
>technical literature long before the Fibre Channel code was developed. X
>and Y stand for the number of transmission levels (Binary for two, Ternary
>for three, etc.), m and n indicated the number of symbols at the respective
>levels. So 8B/10B implies that 8 binary symbols are translated into 10
>binary symbols. Codes of the class 4B/3T translate 4 binary symbols into
>three ternary symbols. This notation is used in major textbooks and IEEE
>publications as any search for the terms quickly reveals. In a context
>where nothing but binary systems are discussed, one might want to simply
>drop the big B and shorten the acronym to 8/10. Both 8/10 and 8B/10B are
>deficient insofar as they are not referencing a specific 8B/10B code of
>which there are many. How about FC8/10 as abbreviation for Fibre Channel
>8B/10B code?
>
>Albert Widmer, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. EMAIL: widmer @us.ibm.com
>
>Mark B. Ritter