4 ms·
What makes ethernet "Ethernet"? There's 10BASE-T Ethernet, which is what we all use and has been around since the late 80s. There's 10BASE5 and 10BASE2 Ethern
by thought_alarm 9y ago
What makes ethernet "Ethernet"?
There's 10BASE-T Ethernet, which is what we all use and has been around since the late 80s.
There's 10BASE5 and 10BASE2 Ethernet, which uses a shared coax cable between machines and was around from the early-80s to the mid-90s.
And then there's the pre-standard coax Ethernet that the Alto used in the 1970s.
Is there a common technological thread between these three things, other than the name?
- fernly 9y agoI think the common thread is multiple sender/receivers on a single shared conductor using csma/cd. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-sense_multiple_access_with_collision_detection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-sense_multiple_access_...
- jweather 9y agoNot since 100Mbit... Gigabit is full duplex only and has no need for collision detection/avoidance.
- tyingq 9y agoSee token ring for shared conductor, but different coordination.[1]. There was a time when it wasn't clear which one would win out. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_ring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_ring Edit: Also DecNet, SNA, Arcnet if you want some more view into competing ideas in the same time period.
- kijiki 9y agoAs you note, L1 has varied a bit, though the big change is that CSMA/CD has given way to essentially point to point L1 links with buffers and arbitration in the switches. The L2 header format has remained largely the same, with a few minor variants that can be automatically disambiguated.