The Cambridge Ring was an experimental local area network architecture developed at the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory in the mid-late 1970s and early 1980s. It used a ring topology with a theoretical limit of 255 nodes (though such a large number would have badly affected performance), around which cycled a fixed number of packets. Free packets would be "loaded" with data by a machine wishing to send, marked as received by the destination machine, and "unloaded" on return to the sender; thus in principle there could be as many simultaneous senders as packets. The network ran over twin twisted-pair cabling (plus a fibre-optic section).
People associated with the project include Andy Hopper, David Wheeler, Maurice Wilkes, and Roger Needham.
In 2002 the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory launched a graduate society called the Cambridge Computer Lab Ring named after the Cambridge Ring.
Famous quotes containing the words cambridge and/or ring:
“For Cambridge people rarely smile,
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile.”
—Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
“Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)