§ Mr. Warrenasked the Secretary of State for Industry what representations his Department has made to the unofficial working group on local area networks entitled "United States IEEE 802" which is considering standards for data communication by cable; and if he will make a statement as to the proposed future of participation in the work of this committee, particularly in relation to interactive systems.
§ Mr. ButcherThe IEEE committee 802, although based in USA, is an international forum for the development of standards for local area networks.
It has six working parties, three of which are concerned with different techniques for local area networking; token bus, token ring and collision sense multiple access by collision detection and two more dealing with standards which apply to all local area networks being the common control mechanisms—logical link control—and high level protocols for file transfer, terminal handling etc.
The sixth working party on metropolitan area networks is relatively new and deals with TV cable systems as local area networks and is thus concerned with interactive applications of cable systems. A representative of the Department has been attending the plenary meetings of IEEE 802 and its logical link control working party. He also reported back on the activities of the MAN group. Following the November 1982 meeting of the IEEE 802 committee, the MAN group documents have been provided to the Department's technical working group on standards for wideband cable systems—the Eden committee.
The Department is also considering ways in which it might contribute to the work of the MAN working party.