Rolanet (Robotron Local Area Network) was a networking standard, developed in the former

German Democratic Republic German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

(GDR) and introduced in 1987 by the computer manufacturer Robotron. It enabled

computer networking A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ma ...

over

coax cable Coaxial cable, or coax (pronounced ) is a type of electrical cable consisting of an inner conductor surrounded by a concentric conducting shield, with the two separated by a dielectric ( insulating material); many coaxial cables also have a p ...

and glass fiber with a range of . Networking speed was 500 kBd, comparable to other standards of the day. A maximum of 253 computers could be connected using Rolanet. Two variants of Rolanet existed: * Rolanet 1, introduced in 1987, saw limited deployment; * Rolanet 2 was planned as a successor to Rolanet 1, but presumably never got beyond the prototype stage. A scaled-down version of Rolanet, BICNet, was used for educational purposes. It is no longer possible to assemble a functioning Rolanet system today, due to lack of software and working hardware.

External links

*
More information about Robotron networking technologies
on ''Robotrontechnik.de'' Computer networking Science and technology in East Germany {{computer-stub