From: Tom Lettington [mailto:tom@tfl.net] Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 11:01 AM

At the risk of incurring the wrath of Mr. Meyer by posting without permission, I offer the following: Harry Newton, of "Newton's TELECOM Dictionary - The Official Dictionary of Telecommunications & the Interent" (Updated 15th Expanded Edition), defines "Broadband" (in the WAN context) as anything over 45Mbps (T3).

heh, that dictionary may be a good marketing tool, but try and pass your engineering exams with it ... you won't. By that definition, my 1.5Gbps switched backplane is a broadband system. It isn't, regardless of what that dictionary says.

The language we use in our industry is evolving at an extremely rapid rate. The great unwashed masses don't necessarily stick with the time honored definitions we would prefer that they admire, respect, and accept as gospel. Get over it!

You must work in marketing. Fuzzy definiions mean fuzzy equations, which reults in things not working. The unwashed masses are allowed to be imprecise, we are not. That's why we get the big bucks (not).