The All-New Switch Book: The Complete Guide to LAN Switching Technology, Second Edition

1.4. IEEE LAN Standards

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) supports the development of industry standards in a wide range of technologies, from power generation to electronic instrumentation to programming languages. In February 1980, a meeting was held at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco, California, to discuss the development of an industry standard for Local Area Networks.^[] That meeting (and many others subsequent to it) spawned the creation of IEEE Project 802, one of the largest and longest-running activities within the IEEE standards organization.

^[] Rich was at that meeting. The Jack Tar Hotel no longer exists (the Cathedral Hill Hotel is now located at the same site), but the IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee does. Interestingly, although much of the constituency of the IEEE 802 committee comes from Northern California (Silicon Valley), that first meeting was the only time that a full IEEE 802 (plenary) session was held anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's much more fun to travel to Maui, Montreal, New Orleans, and the like than to stay at home and work.

The original intent of Project 802 was to develop a single standard for local area computer networks. Recognizing that a number of different skill sets were involved in this endeavor, the group originally split into three subcommittees:

• A Higher-Layer Interface (HILI) group would be responsible for the development of service and programming interfaces for higher-layer protocol clients. ...