I'm an Electronics tech for a company and I'm not extremely familiar with networking with computers. We've just recieved a new data acquisition center and I have to install the computer systems and all of the hardware. The main question I have is what is the purpose of a MAU and where can I find some good information about Token Ring Networking. The system came with a MAU and I'll be setting it up, but they've not given me any information about any setup. I don't necessarily need to use the MAU right now because I'm pretty sure that it is only important when using Token Ring Networking, and we don't currently use Token ring, even though we have some equipment capable of running on Token Ring. I will probably work in the Token Ring connection later after I've got the system up and running for our normal operations, because it should give me a way to directly access data from a new piece of equipment that we don't currently recieve data from. But to make my long story short, I'm just looking for some good info on Token ring networking and MAU's. THanks.

You will probably get the best and most reliable token ring info. from IBM.

A MAU is the token ring equivalent of a hub.

thanks guys, I'll see what I can find from IBM.

Token ring is rather slow and outdated by todays standard....you might want to look at ethernet running Cat5 cabling. If you haven't already purchased token ring equipment you might want to do some comparison shopping....I'm sure you'll find TR is more expensive than ethernet as well.

It doesn't suprise me that's it's a slower technology. Alot of our things are. The processors used in our equipment are only 10MHz processors. Of course that's all we really need for those systems. They're proprietary systems that only run one program to aquire data and help the operator run the equipment. Our equipment can be connected together through a proprietary Lan system, which will then be converted to Token Ring in our Acquisition center. It actually suprises me how fast the computers are that I'm installing in this system. Most of our computers are lagging in speed, due to the fact that it's not that necessary for our job, however the new systems for this piece of equipment are running dual 3.2 GHz CPU's. I must say I'm very jealous or them. If only my home computer were that fast.....lol.