Looking Back on 40 Years of Ethernet
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REPORT July ‘2013 Looking Back on 40 Years of Ethernet one with the flexibility of a now transformed Ethernet into star architecture and made becoming a service offering management for network for carriers “going across the administrators much easier. telechasm between the LAN, the pair, radio, optical fibers, power By the early 90s, this form of WAN and Ethernet,” as Metcalfe line, whatever you wanted,” says Ethernet was much cheaper puts it. The speed of Ethernet Metcalfe than Token Ring and then with also continues to increase with the development of Ethernet the IEEE recently starting a It was decided that the network switching, and 100Mbps ‘Fast project to standardize 400GE, would be completely passive, Ethernet’ in 1995, Token Ring while terabit is also on the with stations arranged to take could not keep up. horizon. turns using one wire. Metcalfe and his colleagues realized that “What they underestimated was Ethernet in its role as the Ethernet would exist through a the power of an open standard, plumbing of the internet has series of protocols with seven and I’m referring to the old IBM disrupted many industries over layers, which became key to now. There’s a new company time including music, books, simplifying its design. called IBM which is different, but telecoms and television, and in that old IBM, in its dark little Metcalfe now predicts the The moment widely recognized heart, it was not committed to technology will go even further. with being the birth of Ethernet open standards and its products In his presentation at the came on May 22, 1973, when were not interoperable,” says Ethernet Innovation Summit, Metcalfe wrote a memo to the future was going to be, and Metcalfe himself admits the Metcalfe. he predicted that three more PARC management explaining it was buildings full of PCs,” technology did have him industries - energy health care how Ethernet would work. Metcalfe notes when looking worried because for a decade, In the years that followed, and education - are set to be Following this, coaxial cable back at the success of 3Com. he was being told from across Ethernet was to extend its impacted via new types of was laid in PARC and the first the industry that Ethernet was reach far beyond the LAN, first video, mobile and embedded computers were attached to It was not until 1983 that the doomed, due to IBM having the entering the WAN, where it traffic. the network on November 11. IEEE 802 committee approved muscle when it came to making was slowly wiping out SONET The technology proved to be an Ethernet as a standard, or at standards. and then over the airwaves “Even though Ethernet is 40 In May this year Ethernet celebrated its 40th birthday. Telecom data connections between the immediate success internally. least the CSMA/CD version supplying WiFi access points. years old, it is not dead. And Review looks back at the technology’s humble beginnings. Hawaiian Islands, and he went Ethernet remained an in of it. By then, Ethernet had The conflict changed Ethernet, The work of the Metro Ethernet apparently it is blooming. It on a month field trip in Oahu house system until 1976 when evolved in Ethernet II and was with the technology switching Forum (MEF), which was is blossoming. And so there’s at the University of Hawaii to Metcalfe and Boggs published becoming increasingly popular. from coaxial cable to the twisted launched in 2001 to develop something like a $100 billion In the late 70s, Bob Metcalfe Xerox Alto. The notion of having study it. their paper titled “Ethernet: This was partly due to the fact pair system used by Token Ring. business services for enterprise industry for us to pay attention was asked to create a local a computer on the desk was at Distributed Packet Switch for that it had become easier to “We were fighting in the market users accessed over optical to, and that’s what we’re doing area network for Xerox’s Palo that time controversial, as was Having looked at the wireless Local Computer Networks”. deploy. The arrival of the IBM with the IBM Token Ring, which metropolitan networks, has today,” says Metcalfe. Alto Research Center (PARC). having a building full of PCs. ALOHAnet and having decided Xerox patented the technology PC two years earlier, in 1981, used twisted pair, and the Little did he know that his That may have been the first the modems were too large to but opened it up to others. also contributed to Ethernet’s customers kind of liked that, so creation would revolutionize time it ever occurred to us, and have one for every desk and success, with previous computer Ethernet decided to become communications across the our great fortune was to be that the speed of 9,500 bits per When Metcalfe left Xerox to systems having been unable twisted pair too, and that sealed world. given this problem that had not second was not fast enough, form 3Com in 1979, he decided to use the technology to its full the doom of the Token Ring,” previously existed,” says Metcalfe Metcalfe and his colleagues to exploit his idea and get effectiveness. says Metcalfe. At the time, Metcalfe, David The network was required to eventually opted for a system DEC, Intel and Xerox to agree Boggs and other members connect hundreds of computers that used one wire of coaxial to commercialize it, forming a It was during the 1980s that The key disadvantage of of the PARC team were at the same time and had to be cable. In choosing the name of consortium known as DIX. what Metcalfe describes as the Token Ring was in its lack of looking somewhat closer to fast enough to drive the printer the technology, Metcalfe opted “LAN wars” occurred between compatibility with non IBM home, having been tasked running at 20Mbps. One of the for the 19th century phrase “Given that everybody had Ethernet and the IBM backed equipment, while Ethernet with enabling PARC’s Xerox largest problems was the sheer ‘Ether’. Luminiferous ether was access to Ethernet technology, Token Ring, a protocol that was able to drum up support Altos personal workstations amount of cables required. Back the name given to the medium how did 3Com win in those resided in the data link layer and from over 20 companies with to connect with a graphical then, the cable used was very through which light travelled. days? It’s very simple. We had used a special three byte frame standards based products that user interface and the world’s heavy and could easily break, “We chose thick coaxial cable a time machine. The group of called a token. Token Ring ran worked together. This meant the first laser printer, EARS, which according to Metcalfe. because it could be tapped us had gone into the future at at LAN speeds of 4Mbps and technological gap between the printed 500 dots per inch and a passively, but we anticipated Xerox PARC and we lived there 16Mbps and initially appeared two was closed quickly and in page per second. Metcalfe drew inspiration from other media would be used, so for eight years and we knew to have theoretical advantages 1990, the 10BaseT IEEE standard the work of Norman Abramson, we didn’t call it coax-net. We what the future looked like. over Ethernet due to its greater allowed the use of hubs and “We were going to put personal the inventor of ALOHAnet, a called it Ethernet because the Then in 1979, we flew back into efficiency, with larger packet switches in Ethernet, switching computers in a building, the technology used to provide ether could be coax, twisted the present, we knew what the sizes and faster speed. it from a bus architecture to 50 51 COVERAGE July ‘2013 NetEvents Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of Ethernet the world for the better? How do you create innovation?” One point he was keen to emphasize is how the biggest consequences of developing a standard often come after it is accepted, because as Ethernet has shown, standards stay around for much longer than imagined. “Good standards become a platform for further innovation. They evolve, they change, they expand other opportunities for devices that nobody ever helped develop Ethernet During the session, Bill Hawe wasn’t to be abstruse. The process and produced a imagined would even exist. at Digital Equipment Corp; delivered one of the standout reason was that our customers limerick he wrote during the And so this is a story about Radia Perlman, inventor of lines of the conference: were the banks. And they late 80s during the time of innovation. It’s a story about the Spanning Tree protocol; “Success has many fathers, absolutely required reliable, Token Ring, Ethernet and evolving standards. It’s about and Norm Abramson, inventor but failure is an orphan. I think predictable delivery of bits and Token Bus. something that happened 40 of the ALOHAnet system Ethernet was particularly services and we could deliver years ago that sent events which was part of Metcalfe’s promiscuous in that regard.” that with Token Ring, whereas “Any nitwit with standards running off in absolutely inspiration for Ethernet. in those days you couldn’t acuity. Soon learns of their the right direction, to create During the session, Boggs Ethernet or Ethernot deliver it with CSMA CD and self-perpetuity. The work was Telecom Review attended the Ethernet Innovation Summit important the Ethernet was innovations that are still spoke of how he became this cable strung around the all done.