Chapter 11 - Standards: An Enabling Institution 1979-1984
11.12 In Perspective
At yearend 1984, the long trek of LAN standards making that began in March of 1978 with the first meeting of ISO/TC97/SC16 reached successful completion and LAN market growth accelerated. With the rules of the game settled, it was time to see what firms could best compete. No longer would compromises, agreements, and votes decide the future of LANs, it would be product offerings, prices and availability. Embraced within the new rules were connectionless, or datagram, protocols that had been dismissed by the powerful CCITT. Technological necessity and individual initiatives had prevailed and overcome the power of the entrenched.
It is now time to return to that fateful day in August 1981 when IBM introduced the PC and observed the intense competition among the firms of the Computer, Telecommunication, Data Communications and LAN market-structures and the coming into being of the networking market-structure.