On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 09:17:31 -0400, "Bill Kearney"
wkearney-99@hot-mail-com wrote:

On a larger vessel it might be worth
considering, but unlikely on recreational vessels.

We already have ethernet and a few variants on recreational boats.
It's only a small jump from there to fiber optic networking. Some big
advantages are no connector corrosion issues and no induced noise, not
to mention high bandwidth for things like multiplexing radar displays
and such.