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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Ecclesine who wrote (9586)	12/8/2000 4:55:45 PM
From: justone	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

Peter: Thanks for the note- it sounds definitive. I guess I'm five years out of date, or more: I learned about the 1972 ethernet back in 1983 from Lenny Klienrock's queuing theory course. I'm still attached to the below definition that implied ethernet meant a shared medium using a collision detection scheme. So what does ethernet mean now? Just another name for IEEE 802.3? The poetry has gone out of the thing! I mean, ether is a fluid, and doesn't sound point to point to me. Perhaps I should appeal to the US poet laureate? Mind you, I don't care what you call it if you make money out of it. But there are serious architecture issues that the word 'ethernet' will hide if you take it at the old meaning. wwwhost.ots.utexas.edu Invention of Ethernet “In late 1972, Metcalfe and his Xerox PARC colleagues developed the first experimental Ethernet system to interconnect the Xerox Alto, a personal workstation with a graphical user interface. The experimental Ethernet was used to link Altos to one another, and to servers and laser printers. The signal clock for the experimental Ethernet interface was derived from the Alto's system clock, which resulted in a data transmission rate on the experimental Ethernet of 2.94 Mbps. Metcalfe's first experimental network was called the Alto Aloha Network. In 1973 Metcalfe changed the name to "Ethernet," to make it clear that the system could support any computer-not just Altos-and to point out that his new network mechanisms had evolved well beyond the Aloha system. He chose to base the name on the word "ether" as a way of describing an essential feature of the system: the physical medium (i.e., a cable) carries bits to all stations, much the same way that the old "luminiferous ether" was once thought to propagate electromagnetic waves through space. Thus, Ethernet was born.”