Now your office and factory can communicate quickly by means of a system that links up computerized equipment.
Although he owned three Apple II microcomputers to speed up billing and record keeping, San Jose Clinic Pharmacy owner and pharmacist Frederick Howe was wasting a good part of his day running up and down stairs to check on his files. His bookkeeper, located in the business office downstairs, would update the files on her computer. Howe would then either look at figtires on her machine or bring the disks upstairs to read on his own Apple before returning them to the bookkeeper for new entries. He could have saved time and shoe leather by using a telephone adapter (mo dem) to transmit data over the telephone, but that would have tied up the line every time he needed information.
The answer to his problem was a local-area network, sometimes referred to as an LAN, a relatively new development that promises to speed internal communications and eliminate paperwork for large and small businesses alike. Networking of large computers -- linking them to remote users via high-speed transmission lines -- has long been a mainstay of data processing. Now local-area networking, as its name implies, allows computerized equipment (including personal computers, word processors, centralized data storage devices, and electronic printers) to transfer information quickly and economically within a limited area, typically on the premises of a single enterprise or between a company's office and factory facilities.
A local-area network consists of the devices it links the wire or cable used to carry data among them, and special circuitry (often on a board that plugs into these devices) that allows each station on the line to transmit and receive information in the encoding system ("protocol") common to the network. With growing competition among networking schemes and resulting price breaks, even modest enterprises like Howe's five-employee pharmacy in San Jose, Calif., can afford the technology.
Now, when Howe's bookkeeper enters data on her Apple, they are stored on a high-capacity hard disk that is shared by the other two Apples. And all three computers can communicate directly, eliminating the need to exchange information by physically transferring floppy disks. With a few keyboard entries, Howe can call up billing information on his computer upstairs from the hatboxsize, hard-disk device, gaining access to the same file his bookkeeper may have added to just moments before at the computer downstairs. The Corvus Omninet networking system Howe chose interconnects Apples and hard-disk memory via twisted-pair wires -- resembling standard electronic wiring -- and index card-size circuit boards, known as "transporters," plugged into a slot inside each Apple.
"We first got interested in networking when we considered sharing information stored on a hard disk," explains Howe. "We priced networking schemes, and they were all too expensive for us, except for Corvus's Omninet. This entire system, including the Apples, cost us $17,000. The hard disk came to $6,500, while the cost of each plug-in card for the Apples was $650. The system turned out to be extemely reliable."
The only major problem Howe has encountered is a common one for local-area network users: After only seven months he has used up all of the network's shared disk-storage capacity. "The hard disk can hold up to 20,000 of our prescription records and it's filled to capacity. We have to buy another hard disk. In the meantime, we can get by with dumping a month's worth of records at a time onto the video cassette we use for backup." Howe's Omninet system is connected by means of a $900 shoe box -- size Corvus Mirror circuit to an ordinary VHS video cassette recorder, permitting rapid copying of valuable data from disk to cassette.
Like many local-area network users, Howe has found the system to be more powerful than the sum of its parts. Having placed all billing functions on the network (with an off-the-shelf accounting program from Great Plains Software Inc., of Fargo, N.Dak., which is designed for use with the Corvus hard disk system), he is developing his own customized program for filling prescriptions and reporting. "We've been using a data management program called the Data Machine [from Pascal Systems Inc., of Menlo Park, Calif.] to consolidate all the information we need," says Howe. "When we have our application completely worked out, we'll be able to have anyone on the network instantly call up prescription files, type up labels, print out bills and reports for third-party billing, and provide data for planning and inventory. The system will also print out a client's allergy listings and multiple-drug prescriptions to warn against contraindications and possible drug interactions. When you realize how many footsteps we can save in a day, it's amazing we ever got by without a local-area network. "
As computerized office equipment appears in more and more businesses of all sizes, local-area networks are solving a variety of office problems. By substituting a speedy flow of electrons for footsteps and slow-moving paper, growing companies no longer need worry about snail-paced interoffice mail, securing stacks of sensitive documents, or tracking down those files that always seem to be circulating when they should be on someone's desk. A local-area network, for example, can be used to implement interoffice electronic mail, including password security for sensitive tiles. And by providing rapid data transmission it saves time and effort in creating documents, filling orders, accounting, and other business functions.
Although hardly new in theory, local-area networks became practical only with the development of low-cost computer systems. As the cost of computing power diminished faster than that of large-capacity memory devices or sophisticated printers, there was an economic incentive to interconnect the relatively inexpensive, stand-alone computer equipment in order to share peripheral devices and data.
Datapoint Corp. of San Antonio, Tex., introduced local-area networking in 1977 with the ARC (Attached Resource Computer) system for interconnecting its own minicomputers and terminals. To connect devices from different manufacturers, however, would require a standard method of communicating. In May 1980, industry giants Xerox, Digital Equipment, and Intel (the chip manufacturer) jointly announced the Ethernet networking system, which they hoped would serve as a standard. But dozens of manufacturers, from industry leaders to garage-based up-starts, have come up with their own systems of wiring and data encoding to link "smart" devices. Ethernet, therefore, has not become a universal standard, although it has proven popular with many other makers (see box, page 54).
