Re: Going the distance

["Simon L. Sabato" <simons@level1.com>]

> At 9:16 AM 99/7/1, Larry Miller wrote:
> >
> >I suspect that if the Committee, in its wisdom, legislates under-achieving
> >link lengths to accommodate the simultaneous worst-case everything as was
> >done in 802.3z, then we will have a similar phenomenon as we have today: if
> >you cannot easily double the link lengths (at least) then you probably
> >bought some pretty cheesy equipment. Sales people, I think, would rather
> >have the standard reflect more closely what the technology will reliably do,
> >not some pruned-back number that they have to talk around.

This statement confuses me.  It is an inherent phenomenon of engineering
that either you 1) ensure that worst-case parts will still work
together, or 2) some combinations of parts will fail even though each is
within specifications.  The latter is simply not a tolerable situation
to me.  It's simple math, if you want 10,000,000 trouble free
installations, then you're going to have to ensure that the
one-in-a-million combination of worst-case devices still works.  

Is there really *any* other way to go about this?

-Simon