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An Interview With The Router Man

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the making-everyone-speak-the-same-language dept.

Angry_Admin writes "For Network World's 20th anniversary, they've published an interview with William (Bill) Yeager, the creator of the multiprotocol router, with some history on how Cisco came to be. As he says in the interview : 'This project started for me in January of 1980, when essentially the boss said, "You're our networking guy. Go do something to connect the computer science department, medical center and department of electrical engineering."' 6 months later he had his first working 3MBit router shoved in a closet."

11 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. And soon after... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...the first ASCII pictures of boobs were sent from the computer science department to the engineering department...

    1. Re:And soon after... by MS-06FZ · · Score: 2, Funny

      Nonsense... ASCII boobs date back at least to the teletype era... I'm sure some enterprising young engineer found ways to make punchcard boobs before that.

      --
      ---GEC
      I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
    2. Re:And soon after... by c6gunner · · Score: 3, Funny

      Technically no.

      ASCII didn't become a standard untill 1967. And art created earlier than that would by "teletype art" or "punchcard art", not ASCII art.

    3. Re:And soon after... by just_another_sean · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ah /. how do I love thee!

      Where else would you see people nitpicking over etymology during a discussion about drawing boobies with a computer?

      --
      Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
  2. Mr. Router by labalicious · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mr. Router, that's his name, his name again is Mr. Router.

  3. Holy Shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This guy is a neighbor of mine. He always spouts off shit like an old crazy man about how he invented the Internet, and this and that. I always tell him that he is wrong, and that Al Gore invented the Internet.

    Now I feel like an ass.

  4. Re:it took him 6 months? by Irish_Samurai · · Score: 2, Funny

    I learned how to write "Hello World" from a command line to my screen!

  5. Re:No, it's not still here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Bill? Is that you? - Had to hide the bugger pretty good to keep the engineers from fucking with it...

  6. Re:it took him 6 months? by Irish_Samurai · · Score: 2, Funny

    That was my thesis.

  7. Re:Things have come so far. by slashdotmsiriv · · Score: 2, Funny

    Not me you idiot! :)

  8. No legacy by kybred · · Score: 2, Funny
    Invent and code in PDP11 *optimizing* assembler? 6 months seems like a prtty short time to me.

    He didn't have any legacy code to contend with! (only half kidding).