Overview 
The
idea for an ARCNET Trade Association (ATA) was extremely ambitious
according to George Thomas, President of Contemporary Controls.
Backed by seed money and the persistent efforts of his marketing
consultant, Ben Wolfe of the IPS Company, an organizational meeting
between those companies most interested in starting an association
was underway. After
coming to a consensus on the association's purpose and name, the
ATA was incorporated in the State of Illinois as a not-for-profit
organization in August 1987. It was formed to remedy ARCNET's
low profile in the computer industry. ARCNET has evolved into
a mature, well-established LAN technology since its introduction
as the first commercially available LAN on the market in 1977.
The ATA, still guardian of the ANSI/ATA 878.1 standard, is supporting
more and more embedded networking applications that require dependable
and timely delivery of data packets. The ATA has continued to
promote efforts to increase industry visibility and development
of this widely installed technology.
The ATA membership is open to anyone. Membership consists of users
of end products, developers and vendors of products, dealers,
distributors, re-sellers and system integrators, and others interested
in ARCNET. This constituency was generated by the installed base
fueled by the sale of more than 10 million nodes of ARCNET across
the continents.
The ATA's
objective is to:
- Provide a universal
clearing house for information about ARCNET at all levels
of detail from an inquirer regardless of membership.
- Support educational
activities about ARCNET.
- Provide for
discussion of items of common interest by users, developers,
and vendors.
- Provide management
for the development of standards associated with ARCNET.
ANSI/ATA
878.1-1999 Local Area Network
In
1991, the ARCNET Trade Association (ATA) received accreditation
by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a standards
developer using the canvass method. ANSI is the organization that
administers and coordinates the U.S. voluntary standardization
and conformity assessment systems. In 1992, the ATA achieved approval
of an American national standard that defines the basic ARCNET
technology and recommends certain practices that increase reliability
and interoperability. The standard specifies the formats and protocols
used by the 878.1 token passing bus medium access control (MAC)
sublayer and physical (PHY) layer. The ATA standards committee
proposed a revision to the standard in 1999 to include alternate
physical layers such as fiber optics and EIA-485 communications
as well as alternate data rates. ATA then completed the process
established by ANSI for obtaining a consensus on the revision.
Following ANSI approval of the revised standard, ANSI/ATA 878.1-1999
Local Area Network: Token Bus was published. It is available for
purchase, using the order form on this web site. For more information
about ANSI, visit http://web.ansi.org.
Sponsoring
Member Companies
Logo
Standards For ATA & ATA Connected Logos
Contacting
the ATA
Mailing
Address:
ARCNET Trade
Association
c/o Contemporary Controls
2431 Curtiss Street
Downers Grove, IL 60515 USA
Email:ata@arcnet.com
Board
of Directors' Email Addresses and Bios
