Wide-area data communications is a very strange field. The logical way to develop such an industry would be to first figure out a way to send data and then refine and specialize that process to particular applications. That may be the right way, but the reality of telecommunications has followed a very different path.

The crux of the difference is synchronous versus asynchronous communications, or more exactly what the communications looks like in the time domain. Voice traffic on a telephone must at some point be time-synchronized, otherwise "Watson, come here - I need you!" becomes "XKD*FE@#%!". This synchronization is critical to human communications, but much less important to most computer-to-computer communications.

This fundamental fact has divided telecommunications into two camps that use the same language but speak from two different points of view. This discussion is still going on, based on an EE Times Article on the resurgence of Time-Domain based network protocols in the telecom networks.

Is there a lot of interest in this? I can provide more material and some pointers if people are interested. (I also added the link, which I couldn't find on the site earlier).

Larry Mittag