Ethernet History

Ethernet History Timeline

First 30 Years Timeline

The interactive Ethernet history timeline is based on the Ethernet poster Mayfield Fund commissioned for the 25th anniversary at Vortex 1998.

Omissions and errors will be rectified, and seminal events since then will be added to the timeline.

Seminal Publications

Important papers, publications and books are listed with links on the left column to enable authors to comment through this post about interesting aspects and recollections of their work.  If necessary a dedicated post can easily be created.

An interesting observation is that most of the seminal work around Ethernet was done at Xerox. The major influence from outside produced the CAT5 wiring and star topology for ease of installation and maintenance, and it is now the most common configuration for wired Ethernet.