Brief History
When it was tested in 1985 by IBM, the Token Ring transmitted data at 4 Mbit/s and eventually reached the 16 Mbit/s benchmark in 1989 with the 802.5 standard being extended to support it. Apollo Computer outdid IBM in 1981 when they introduced their Apollo Token Ring (ATR), by transmitting at a 12 Mbit/s speed and along with Proteon who introduced their ProNet-10 Token Ring in 1984 which reached 10 Mbit/s. Ironically though, IBM’s was not compatible with neither of the two’s Token Rings.

Inside the Technology
As anyone might be able to guess, as the name suggest, the Token Ring LAN is when stations are ordered in a ring topology. In this ring, stations will transmit data from one ring station to another with a control token in the middle circulating. To pictorially put, a Token Ring network is like a star, with loops going in and out from the middle of the station to the hubs at the outside. It is cabled with the IBM “Type-1?shielded twisted pair. However, these hermaphroditic connectors were not the most ideal cables, as they were quite huge, requiring a 3 x 3 cm space, and made up of complex and fragile plastic pieces.

A Token Ring is basically a local area network protocol within the data link layer (DLL) of the OSI model. As its name suggests, it uses what is called a token, a three-byte frame, which revolves around a ring in a loop. Since each station repeats this procedure of using the token and the ring, and to its downstream neighbor, this is how access is established among the stations. A station would acquire the necessary token and then transmit it.

Later, 4 Mbit/s and 16 Mbit/s speeds were standardized by the IEEE 802.5 working group. As technology developed, 100 Mbit/s was standardized and eventually, 1000 Mbit/s speed too in 2001, although none were bought in the market.

Although the Token Ring LAN was deemed superior to the Ethernet at the beginning, tests showed otherwise. With the introduction of switched and faster versions of the Ethernet, the Token Ring began to show lags and eventually fell behind in performance and reliability too.

Inserting the Token Ring
There is a five phrase ring insertion process before a station can be a part of the ring network. If one of the steps are not done properly, there could be an error.
 Lobe Check (Phrase 0): The station that is to be placed in the network will first perform a lobe media check. It is wrapped at the MSAU and then send and receive 2000 test frames to see that there is no error during these transmissions.
 Physical Insertion (Phrase 1): A 5 volt signal will be sent by the station to the MSAU. This opens up the relay.
 Address Verification (Phrase 2): Then, the station will transmit MAC frames to the destination address field of the Token Ring frame using its own MAC address. If everything is normal (frame is returned with the address is copied), the station is to participate every seven seconds in a ring poll process. This process is the time when the station fully identifies itself as a portion of the MAC management functions.
 Participating in ring poll (Phase 3): Now, the station will learn its Nearest Active Upstream Neighbor (NAUN). Then, its other downstream neighbors will know of its address, which also completes the creation of a new ring map.
 Requesting Initialization (Phrase 4): Last but not least, the station will send out a request to the parameter server to be correctly configured for the ring. This is done through a special address known as the Token Ring bridge.

conversation, small talk, personality skills

I have found that the best way to get someone to respond positively to you is to LIKE them!

Seriously! It is so easy!!! Plus, it works.

I’ve recently started a new position as a professional headhunter. I’ve always done professional networking and marketing for individuals but now have joined a new firm. Most of what I’m doing now is COLD CALLING. UGH..the dreaded COLD CALL.

What does it consist of? Hi! My name is Mary Gardner and I’m with XYZ company, ?who is the Director of Operations? From there I ask questions and gather information until I get the right person on the phone that might have a serious interest in my candidate that I’m marketing.

The difference that I’ve seen in my first few days is that the first day I was TERRIFIED to call. I didn’t feel ready. I felt unprepared. I wasn’t clear of the procedures and I didn’t even feel comfortable with the phone. Here is what happened: the first few calls.. people almost hung up on me. They didn’t have the tolerance for a person with no confidence.

Today, I relaxed. I committed to myself that I was going to have FUN and to make the people enjoy our encounter. I’d do that by showing them favor over the phone and acting excited to talk with them, even though I had no idea of who they were and what they did. And guess what? It worked! I spoke with numerous “gatekeepers?as we call them, or administrative people who shared all of the information that I wanted about the company. I used their NAME in the conversation! I asked how they were doing and didn’t ignore them. I asked about the weather when they were in south Florida and laughed with them when they forgot whether it was morning or afternoon in their greeting. I truly just enjoyed all of the people I met.. and guess what?

They liked me back!!! I expressed enthusiasm when speaking WITH them and TO them, and they responded in kind. It was so much more fun to speak with them when I stopped thinking OF MYSELF and my nerves, and started thinking about THEM!!!

Of course I did all of the standard things you do in small talk! I asked them questions and I listened to them intently. I asked about them, or their company or the weather or if they were having a good day, but I showed interest in THEM and their lives. That was the total key today to enjoying new people and getting them to feel comfortable with me.

I liked them.

How about you? Are you expressing interest and curiosity in others? Are you excited to speak with them? Do you show interest in their response? Do you laugh at their jokes? Do you sincerely want to show that person that they are OK in your book?

You might find what I found. A day of potential stress can turn into a day full of fun.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the type of boss who thinks it’s never acceptable to talk on the phone. I understand that during the workday, things are inevitably bound to come up which require an employees’ attention. We’ve all been there. Perhaps a child is sick or the car is in the shop needing repairs. I understand that these things often require time spent on the phone. Judging from the traffic on my lines and the astronomical phone bills I was receiving, however, this was way beyond what I think any employer would consider acceptable.

So, I decided to replace the old phone system. The new system has a line for every extension, including mine, so that vendors or anyone else will be able to reach me at any time. Since the new phone system also offers increased functionality, I had an additional feature programmed in.

Now, whenever someone makes an outgoing call, they must dial in their own code so that both the number they call and the times spent are recorded. These records are matched to the phone bill and all employees are required to mark the non-business related calls they make each month. Since the calls bear their code, they cannot say it wasn’t them who made the call. Of course, they must pay for these calls. I have noticed that phone times (and my phone bills) have decreased substantially.

If you want a good picture on your TV, though (or good reception for your radio, as the case may be), you need a good quality antenna. The best antennas for home use are generally ones that are mounted on the roof, as it is much easier for them to get a good signal from up there.

If you can’t get an antenna onto the roof for some reason, don’t worry ?there are a few more alternatives to endlessly fiddling with which way the thing points. One good thing to try is a booster antenna. This is a special kind of antenna that plugs into the mains electricity, and uses the extra power to boost the signal strength that reaches your TV. Boosters are cheap and easy to use, yet can often yield a surprising leap in quality.

Another thing you might try is to use a long antenna (usually made from a long piece of wire), and put it out of a window. While hardly very nice to look at, this also tends to improve your reception.

If you want your TV to be able to receive digital transmissions over the airwaves, then you may find that you need to upgrade your antenna. This is because some older antennas simply do not have enough bandwidth to handle digital transmissions. However, plenty of antennas are compatible with digital TV, meaning that all you need to do is add a set top box or get a TV that is capable of decoding digital transmissions out of the box.

Technology has grown by leaps and bounds, especially in the last two decades. From faxes to cellular phones and the dawning of the computer age, changes that have affected phones in general, but particularly business phones, have been varying and abundant. Looking at other industries where technology has influenced design and protocols, one can easily see that not all manufacturers share the same competitiveness that business phone manufacturers share in relation to keeping their products as current as possible. Digital telephones were available before the digital alarm clock, digital wrist watch or the digital thermostat.

While it could be argued for the digital alarm clock or the digital wrist watch that this is simply a matter of function not really benefitting form, I doubt that anyone would dispute the exclusion of the thermostat in that description. Like the digitalization of the telephone, digitalized thermostats offer options that were not possible prior to the conversion. From the ability to adjust temperature settings based on time to the increased level of accuracy, digitalization has offered great benefits to this particular product. Why then, were products such as these so much slower than the business telephone to adopt digitalization?

It is more a testament to the dedication of telephone equipment manufacturers than it is a knock on other product manufacturers. The telephone business is highly competitive, and the ultimate beneficiary of this competitiveness is the consumer. Whatever changes lie ahead for technology, you can be certain that business phone manufacturers will incorporate those changes into their products.

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Emoticons gained popularity in the middle of the last century. During the mid-seventies, they were popular among users of the Plato system. By the end of that decade, these symbols started appearing on the Internet. Like their earlier usage, these symbols represented a specific meaning and were less graphical in nature.

Scott Fahlman is the inventor of the original ASCII smiley emoticons : – ) and : – (

These symbols have to be viewed by tilting ones head ninety degrees to the left. The colon represents the eyes, the hyphen represents the nose and the braces represent the mouth. A huge number of variations have been developed to represent a myriad of emotions. For instance, ; – ) denotes a wink, : – D represents a wide grin : – O shows a surprised face, and so on.

Since western text is read from left to right, all these emoticons are tilted to the left. Some users from Asia developed a series of emoticons that could be viewed straight. These used a pair of braces to outline the face, an underscore for the mouth and a pair of asterisks for the eyes like this (*_*) Most of the emotions in this type of emoticons are expressed through the eyes, whereas the western emoticons use the mouth for the same purpose.

Since the advent of the graphical user interface like Windows, the emoticons have been replaced by cute pictures that depict the same emotion. Instant Messengers and forums automatically display these icons when they encounter a character string that depicts an emoticon.

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One reason that many people still prefer cable tv as their entertainment choice is the lack of interference by bad weather. Because cable is a direct link, as opposed to satellites, things like weather won’t interfere with the quality of your entertainment. And what better time is there to relax in front of your favorite shows than when it’s dreary and wet, and there’s nothing else to do.

Why get cable TV, when you can get competitive pricing for satellite instead? One reason to go with cable TV is to stay connected with your neighborhood. While local channels are available with satellite TV, there may be an extra charge for these channels. With cable, these channels are usually thrown in at no extra charge, although you should inquire to make sure that this is the case with any company you choose to do business with. In addition, your cable TV company will likely include some channels that exist only through cable. That may include updated and immediate area school news, city and county government programming, and other news and information for your area.

It may not seem like a big deal to have local channels. After all, the programming for channels that you pick normally has everything you want. Or those channels have almost everything. What they don’t have is your community news and events, unless you live in a very large town. If you want to know what the weather is going to be like for tomorrow, you don’t want to turn on the television and only find a forecast for someone three states away. You want to know what the weather in your region of your state is going to look like. Cable TV can help you with this. Local channels can also keep you aware of events and school closings in bad weather and more.

Many people like satellite TV because of the parental control options. Some aren’t aware that the same options are available for cable tv users. This way, you can enjoy having all the channels you want, but still restrict your children’s viewing. You get to decide what channels are appropriate for their viewing, not someone in the entertainment business. This way, your television programs can parallel your values.