 Stan- dards committees face many complex issues. Even if we leave out the more political and irrational pressures, standards committees must try to define how untested technolo- gies will be developed and will serve vaguely defined customer needs. The time spent creating and testing standards is essential, and yet it draws away from each company's own development efforts. The most basic purpose of standards-to make it easier to create working systems faster-is usually achieved. Or, at least, not having a standard is worse than having one. When an interface is left undefined, the results are usually costly. One of the au- thors (Kemp) saw a particularly vivid example of this when he was a local area network Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. General Cellular Standards Standards for Cellular Systems (LAN) manager. IBM PC compatibles had almost every essential standard defined. As a result, it was easy to swap out keyboards, adapter cards, modems, CD-ROMs, and monitors. However, there was no standard specified for a security device. Third-party products fit the niche. However, they required removing the cover from every PC and drilling a hole in it in order to install a lock bolt that could then be attached to a secu- rity cable. If the IBM PC had had a standard for physical security, installing a physi- cal security system would have been a lot less time-consuming. 2 ITU, ANSI, and the other standards committees have a remarkable track record at creating standards that enable communications systems. One essential fact should be highlighted: Once a standard is defined, it is possible to create independent test proce- dures that validate equipment models, each built to its own specification, as function- ing according to the standard. If it functions according to the standard, it should be in- teroperable with other equipment in th