It's unfortunate but true: The sun eventually sets on everything. Even pet rocks and the Reagan years had to pass into history at some point. The same applies to network technology, and it's with a heavy heart that I must report the end of TDM (time-division multiplexing). It has, as they say, kicked the bit bucket. TDM ruled the corporate WAN through the 1980s and well into the 1990s. Its reign began when AT&T miscalculated the pricing of DS-0 64/56-kbit/s and DS-1 (T1) 1.544-Mbit/s links. Still acting like the monopoly it had once been, AT&T set pricing so high that corporations decided to go off and build their own private networks instead of relying on public network services. TDM helped them do it.
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