Fiber Distributed Data Interface

The Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) standard was produced by the ANSI X3T9.5 standards committee in the mid-1980s. During this period, high-speed engineering workstations were beginning to tax the capabilities of existing local-area networks (LANs) (primarily Ethernet and Token Ring). A new LAN was needed that could easily support these workstations and their new distributed applications. At the same time, netwok reliability was becoming an increasingly important issue as system managers began to migrate mission-critical applications from large computers to networks. FDDI was developed to fill these needs.

After completing the FDDI specification, ANSI submitted FDDI to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO has created an international version of FDDI that is completely compatible with the ANSI standard version. Today, although FDDI implementations are not as common as Ethernet or Token Ring, FDDI has gained a substantial following that continues to increase as the cost of FDDI interfaces diminishes.FDDI is frequently used as a backbone technology as well as a means to connect high-speed computers in a local area.