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Later on, my manager wanted a third
network added. I then automatically added more networks to the comparison, as
ammunition for the sales people so they could answer any question from (potential)
customers or counter any critique. In 1996, the Internet came into being.
Because I worked for a company which made industrial controllers, we were
confronted with questions about the most exotic networks. I started collecting
URL's, just to be prepared to answer questions from the sales staff. As I felt
that the list would be of use for others as well, but the company at that time
did not understand the need for an own website, I could not publish it
there. Instead, I resorted to the Control.com maillist, on which it was
irregularly posted. I also published the list in magazines such as Elektronica (Dutch)
and Elektronik (German). When I left the company in 1997, I temporarily lost
interest in the list. It came back in 1998, and since then I checked all URL's
every two months, and posted the results in the Control.com maillist. From there
it was picked up by others, some of whom made their own pages based on my
posting, and even a few put their own name under it. To my surprise, the list
grew and grew and still there seems to come no end to the number of new
systems. One would have thought that by know it would be clear that there are
too many "open" networks. Since 1999, the list grew even faster
because a lot of systems hunted for standardization by ISO, IEC, CENELEC, EIA
and IEEE (or any combination thereof, or even more than once). That's when I
started adding references to (inter)national standards. In 2000, I started
adding references to user's groups and trade associations, literature (books),
magazines, email lists, archives, and my own courses. So I hope that the
Fieldbus Reference List can truly be seen as a portal to all information
sources about industrial networks that existon the WWW.
Date: 14-Sep-2000 |