He was only describing hardware that was available at the time in businesses. Around that same time, Digital had a product called Pathworks that was very popular. All the PC's used standard unshielded twisted pair Ethernet. It wasn't that expensive. The Pathworks license was about $3,000 per VMS server though. This was great due to Windows NT didn't become popular until 3.51 in 1995 or so. Even then it was 100% interoperable with VMS LANMAN file servers and vice versa. NetWare 3.1 was also popular starting in 1991, although that far back the slim coax cable was still in use.