Are token-ring networks still in use? What products are available?

Question

I'm looking for some materials on current usage of token-ring network?

Is there any token-ring device in the market? If there is, what are the names?

Answer 1

You can still buy gear from Madge, but the IEEE site says the 802.5 working group is in hibernation. The last time I saw it in the wild was around 2001 or 2002.

Answer 2

Are you looking for any examples of a Ring Topology? I believe you can still find FDDI being used in a few places.

Answer 3

A quick search yields this:

http://www.madge.com/products/prod-adapters.aspx

It looks as though there are still token ring adapters out there. I'm actually quite surprised. It's even XP and 2003 certified!

Answer 4

The short answer is "it's dead".

There's a whole bunch of places where there's a little bit of legacy gear that uses it, but it, along with FDDI are dead tech.

(Frame Relay is fast approaching, but ATM is hanging in there)

Answer 5

Why would you want to use it? It has a bunch of annoying failure modes and cheap fast Ethernet hardware is widely available.