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Ethernet Turns 40
alancronin writes "Four decades ago the Ethernet protocol made its debut as a way to connect machines in close proximity, today it is the networking layer two protocol of choice for local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs) and everything in between. For many people Ethernet is merely the RJ45 jack on the back of a laptop, but its relative ubiquity and simplicity belie what Ethernet has done for the networking industry and in turn for consumers and enterprises. Ethernet has in the space of 40 years gone from a technology that many in the industry viewed as something not fit for high bandwidth, dependable communications to the default data link protocol."
... turns over in its grave.
Break out the BNCs and coax.
Q&A with the inventor: http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/1erztm/table_iama_youre_probably_connecting_to_reddit/
" Ethernet is merely the RJ45 jack on the back of a laptop"
When I started using it we had coax cables in daisy chain with 50 Ohm terminators at each end. I never forget spending all day trying to find out why the network was acting flaky, when just for kicks I changed the terminators and it worked. One of them was an open circuit. Go figure... We also had the 3Com 3C501 Ethernet cards the size of a bus (ok a full high/length AT card) which cost $500 each at the time. Ahh the good ole days...
Get off my lan.
Ethernet's fiber-optic wife left him for Wifi. His kids call the new guy daddy. The child support leaves him living in a run down shithole where he can barely even do 10 Mbps. Life just wasn't what he'd hoped it would be.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The spec might be 40, but 40 years ago was 1973. You could not buy anything Ethernet that early. None of it was actually available for sale until the early 1980s. I was there; I was involved in early implementations (anyone remember "thick wire" Ethernet, or the early DEC routers and bridges? Kinks and reflections?).
That was actually one of the genius bits of Ethernet. It was designed (DEC, Xerox, and Intel) to do what needed to be done, not what could be done with the available tech. It took a while for the state-of-the-art tech to catch up with the spec. Which is why you couldn't buy any Ethernet equipment until around 1980.
I'm just sayin', that for the people who were there, actually working in the field (not in a Xerox research lab), Ethernet is only around 33 years old. And it sure as hell didn't start out with RJ45 connectors!
"For many people Ethernet is merely the RJ45 jack on the back of a laptop, but its relative ubiquity and simplicity belie what Ethernet has done for the networking industry and in turn for consumers and enterprises."
This is one of the strangest sentences I have encountered in quite a while.
First, "belie" is very definitely the wrong word to use here. It means "to show to be false". And second, Ethernet is ubiquitous largely because of its simplicity... there is nothing surprising about that.
Us old farts who were actually working in the field at the time know you couldn't actually buy any Ethernet equipment until around 1980. I remember installing a "thick wire" LAN using DEC routers / bridges around then. The spec. might be 40, but you sure as hell couldn't buy anything in 1973.
The genius of Ethernet was that DEC, Xerox, and Intel speced out what needed to be done, then went about developing the technology to implement it. Would that that methodology were used more!
Yet another technology created a xerox that they never profited from. Yeah for xerox!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's an 8P8C connector on their laptop, not RJ45.
...but what happens to the bits is almost completely different. The original layer 1 (physical) layer stuff has evolved from the original idea of a shared broadcast medium (thick and thin coax up through the age of hubs) to nowadays being a point-to-point network managed through a centralized intelligent switch. And the layer 2 stuff (data link) evolved from the original spec of 1973 to the notably different 802.2 spec in 1983. In some ways, the great success of Ethernet is that it became the name we gave to whatever technology won out.
This really makes me feel like retiring! I worked at the USAF Global Weather Center (AFGWC) near Omaha in the 1970s where there was this mysterious computer referred to as a TIP which plugged into an even more mysterious ARPANET thing. We'd hang 9-track tapes and ship data back to research and archive centers on the east coast once a day. As a 2nd LT my time was deemed cheap enough to spend babysitting the transfer process (which often broke down). Time flies when you're on the 'net.
Those BNCs were pretty tough connectors. When I first got an IT job, the network consisted of two 486s connected via a BNC cable dangled over the carpet across the room. A clumsy co-worker tripped over it and both machines flew off the desks, hit each other in mid air like conkers and crashed onto the floor. The BNC cable and connectors were completely undamaged though.
Yes, it''s been so long since the last incompatible connector hell, we're just inching for a new one!