In Memory of Ron Crane
August 28, 2017
Metcalfe's Law After 40 Years of Ethernet
October 15, 2015
Ethernet at 40! May 23, 2013
October 15, 2015
Ethernet Lobby at Stanford Huang Center
December 12, 2010
The Ethernet Lobby at the Stanford School of Engineering's new Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center is a gift from many Stanford faculty and students who contributed to the invention, productization, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet. Those making this gift played key roles in Ethernet's success. Ethernet was invented in 1973 at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center by Bob Metcalfe (also at that time on the faculty at Stanford and one of my PhD thesis advisors) and David Boggs (also at that time a fellow graduate student at Stanford.)
Some of us: Len Shustek, John Shoch, Robert Garner, Yogen Dalal and Ron Crane
Computer History Museum 2008 Fellows Award
August 24, 2008
Bob Metcalfe receives this award for fundamental contributions in the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet.
David Boggs, Ron Crane and Bob Metcalfe at the event.
Ethernet History Timeline
September 01, 2007
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
September 01, 2007
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.
Ethernet @ 30, May 22, 2003
August 31, 2007
Xerox PARC
David Boggs and Bob Metcalfe
Ed McCreight, Gordon Bell and David Liddle
John Shoch and David Boggs
Pitts Jarvis, Bob Garner and Ron Crane
Bob Printis and David Liddle
Photographs courtesy of PARC. Photographer is Deanna Horvath
25th Anniversary at Vortex 1998
August 31, 2007
DEC-Intel-(3Com)-Xerox and IEEE 802.3
August 30, 2007
After leaving Xerox to start 3Com, Bob Metcalfe contacted Gordon Bell (DEC), and then persuaded David Liddle (Xerox) and Phil Kaufman (Intel) to bring their respective organizations to work together to create a new standard that has lasted over 25 years and has gone from local area nertworks, to wireless networks to high speed wide area networks. The engineering groups at DEC, Intel and Xerox brought their respective skills in hardware, semi-conductors and distributed computing to ensure that this standard would last for a long time. David Redell (Xerox), Rich Seifert (DEC) and Rob Ryan (Intel) created Version 1.0 of the Ethernet Specification on September 30, 1980, and Bob Printis (Xerox) represented Ethernet to the IEEE standards body to create IEEE 802.3 .
Genesis of 3Com
August 30, 2007
X-Wire
August 30, 2007
In 1977 the Xerox Star team began working on X-Wire, a 20 Mbps version of the PARC Ethernet XWire Draft Spec. The speed of X-Wire was reduced to 10 Mbps because the higher speed reduced the length of a coax cable segment to below 500m, and also because the typical spacing for the transceiver taps produced undesirable reflections. The 10 Mbps X-Wire became the starting point for the DIX Ethernet Specification.
Those Early Years at Xerox PARC
August 30, 2007
Ethernet has changed the way we connect computers and its simplicity is what has made it so popular. The idea was influenced by Bob Metcalfe's PhD Thesis and documented in his landmark May 22, 1973 memo.
Bob Metcalfe -- 1973
Bob Metcalfe and Ron Rider -- 1974
David Boggs and an Alto Ethernet card
David Boggs
History of Ethernet Video
August 30, 2007
This Blog
August 30, 2007
This blog celebrates the creation of Ethernet and its history by bringing together in one place an interactive time line of the major events and the names of people whose contributions were invaluable. Interesting videos, photos, and links to seminal papers are provided in posts so that they may elicit participation by the pioneers via comments. If you would like to write a post, please contact me and I can arrange to do it for you or invite you as an author.
