A b-o-r-i-n-g session on "directions" from an IBM technical manager. I would have left early if I wasn't in the exact middle of a standing-room-only crowd of 300 people.

He reviewed recent LAN announcements, viz. the 16/4 Mbps token-ring adapter and early token release. He talked about source routing through the LAN; when many rings are connected together, how do you figure out how to route a message from one PC to another? You do this by sending a "discovery" packet, which gets broadcast all through the network. There may be several paths to the receiver, and he will receive the discovery packet as many times as there are paths. The receiver replies to each one; bridge nodes record the path taken by discovery replies. The reply that gets back to the original sender first is obviously on the shortest path.

The speaker was technically competent, but frankly my dear...