30 Years of Ethernet

Babylon Rocker writes "An interview with one of the inventors of Ethernet." Metcalfe talks about the history of Ethernet as well as what he's been up to for the last couple years. (Not surprisingly, he's now a VC ;)

Comments

Bigmouth

[Eric Seppanen]

Metcalfe has a habit of saying stupid things, I wonder why people keep listening to him. One great invention thirty years ago, paired with a huge ego, does not an oracle make.

Re:Maybe I'm Dumb

[gwernol]

What's VC stand for?

Venture Capitalist. People and institutions invest large sums of money into the funds run by his partnership. He then decides how to invest that money in other companies - usually high tech. startups. Its risky but potentially high reward, depending on how successful the companies he invests in become.

Re:30 Years of frustration

[bluGill]

RJ-45 wasn't used for ethernet 30 years ago. Back then it was 10base5 (for 500 meters max cable length), or thicknet. A thick cable (that I have never seen) running thorugh the ceiling, and a AUI cable running from your computer to a tranciever in the cable. AUI is that 15 pin connector (like a pc joystick connector, but a slide holds the cable on not screws or luck) on the back of many older computers. Mostly if you see it there is a 10baseT tranciever connected to it today.

Sometime latter "thinnet" came out, or 10base2 (200 meter cable), which was a much thinner cable, and much cheaper. It is still cheaper than twisted pair for small instalations. Though almost everyone is using twisted pair because it is easier and more reliable.

I don't know exactly when 10BaseT with the rj-45 connectors came onto the scene, but it started catching on in the early 90s.

never been in Silicon Valley during dotCom era?

[lingqi]

If you have, you would absolutely, certainly have the initials VC engarined in your mind. These are the overlords that controls your life and owns your soul.

Especially toward the end when all of them were changing from benevolent take-all-you-want piggybanks* to bloodsucking vampires that fires off one coworkers after next with glee**.

*note1: actually, from the beginning it was more like the inverse of beggars: they often *BEGGED* you to take their money if you just had the stupidest business plan involving the word "internet" and "e-commerce."

**note2: okay, I have to admit they didn't want to see the company they have vested interest fail, but toward the end, most VCs took control of their companies directly, and had no quarrals about tossing people out like used rags.

For all the geeks out there - the whole dot-com -> dot-bomb thing taught me one big lesson: unless you make it to upper management or start out on your own (really on your own, i.e. your own capital), you are just a (disposable) pawn in this game.

Re:The world without Ethernet

[tmasssey]

You're kidding me, right?

Before 1993 or so and the advent of Switched Ethernet, Ethernet would melt down under the weight of its own traffic. 40% traffic for Ethernet is an emergency situation. I've seen TR networks hum along with 80-90% utilization and the users barely know.

Token Ring has built-in QoS. It has several levels of error monitors. These are things that are kind of added by switches, but are not a fundamental part of the topology. And if you don't have a *good* switch, you don't even have that.

Of course, in the early 90's Ethernet cards were under $100 and Token Ring cards were $400. *That's* why Ethernet won. Not speed: TR was doing 16MBit when Ethernet could only do 10, and remember, I can acually *get* 16Mbit from TR, instead of 4Mbit with Ethernet. Today, with good switches, I don't miss TR too much. But before switches...

Maybe that's why many, many very large organizations were using TR even into the early '90's. Try running 300 computers on unswiched 10Mbit Ethernet (the best Ethernet had then)...

Re:30 Years of frustration

[b1t r0t]

You forgot the best part of 10base5... the vampire taps! In order to hook up to thicknet, you have to stick a vampire tap into the coax cable, and that was hooked up through the appropriate interface box to the AUI connector.

No, YOU'VE got to be kidding ME

[macdaddy]

Before 1993 or so and the advent of Switched Ethernet, Ethernet would melt down under the weight of its own traffic. 40% traffic for Ethernet is an emergency situation.

No, you're kidding me, right?

I can't believe this FUD is still out there after 30 years. Contrary to popular and mis-guided belief, an Ethernet will NOT saturate itself at 37% utilization. Period. Anyone that honestly believes that should give the token ring and ATM salesdroids and spin doctors a great big pat on the back because that's exactly what it is: sales doubletalk and spin from vendors of competing technologies. For christ's sake, this myth was laid to rest in September of 1988 . This FUD relies on over-simplifications of assumptions in the theory and inadequacies in the testing procedures.

I can't believe you'd honestly bring it up. Anyone with even a marginal amount of actual networking experience knows this to be FUD. Next time think before you speak about something you know nothing about.

Don't Forget David Boggs

[n9fzx]

David was the other half of the Metcalfe-Boggs "team" that made Ethernet a reality. Dave is an honest-to-nuts Friend of the Electron electrical engineer, who had to crack the problem of making CSMA/CD work in the Real World; in particular, how do your hear a transmitter 500 meters away when you're sitting right next to your own?

Boggs invented the first (of many) hardware circuit techniques to do collision detection, and other elements of transceiver design. If Dave hadn't picked up a soldering iron, we'd probably be doing DATAKIT or some other telco hack.