Interconnection of Local Area Networks - Guest Editorial

About ten years ago, advanced computer and workstation users began to realize that local communication system was required to interconnect diverse dataprocessing equipment to enable better sharing of the resources available in an establishment. This idea led to the development of what has become known as local area networks (LAN's), systems that typically employ a shared medium and a unique protocol to access this medium. Initially, there was much enthusiasm among engineers to solve the local networking problem with a single LAN technology, but for various technical and commercial reasons, it soon turned out that a plurality of LAN media and access protocols was unavoidable and even desirable.