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It still kills me that this name was used for a wired, rather than a wireless setup.
by WillAdams 3y ago
It still kills me that this name was used for a wired, rather than a wireless setup.
- jasonjayr 3y ago> It reflected a comment Thacker had made early on, that “coaxial cable is nothing but captive ether,” PARC researcher Alan Kay recalled. From the article on the origin of the name.
- WillAdams 3y agoYes, but ethernet does not does not communicate this in such a way that it communicates that this is a cabled system, nor is there is a matching phrasing for one which doesn't need cables.
- dhc02 3y agoI think about this every single time I read or hear the word ether. "It means an invisible transfer medium. What were they thinking!?"
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoThat's Aether.
- dwighttk 3y agoSynonyms
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoSo it is, I didn't know that. In that case the other poster point stands, I'm guessing they used the word to indicate the magic of the network?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago...So calling wifi Aethernet would be hilarious, but I think we can maybe agree that would not have been a great idea for the sake of actually being able to talk about them out loud.
- vore 3y agoTell that to the person who said "trie" should be pronounced "tree"!
- tokai 3y agoThey were thinking that they were making a new medium to propagate a signal. Wifi is not a medium but a protocol.
- flashback2199 3y agoThe name actually makes some sense from the low level system programmer's perspective on the original Ethernet where you flung packets blindly into a single coax cable that snaked around to each workstation.
- japanuspus 3y agoThe thing is that compared to Token Ring etc., Ethernet really is an "ether" where you just send your packets and hope that there is no collision. But yes.
- Almondsetat 3y agoEthernet is a protocol, it has nothing to do with the cables. WiFi operates using a slight variant of the Ethernet frame
- marcus0x62 3y agoEthernet is a family of standards which encompass physical wiring, connectors, electrical/optical signaling standards, and logical layer standards. It absolutely has to do with the cables as well as the signaling.