4 ms·

I thought ethernet was more of the wire protocol than the cable. I could have sworn that the "ethernet" cables when I first started working were coax, and the

I thought ethernet was more of the wire protocol than the cable. I could have sworn that the "ethernet" cables when I first started working were coax, and the article talks about the first ethernet being on coax. Seems like ethernet in modern usage is synonymous with CAT5.

michaelt 3y ago
Ah yes, "Thick Ethernet" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5 and "Thin Ethernet" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2 Ten whole megabits to share between up to 30 computers, on a single multidrop bus.
- FFP999 3y ago
  And if a single vampire tap comes loose, the entire network segment goes down. Don't miss that.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  And 10BaseT! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair) Anybody else remember "vampire connections"? [Ah, a minute late. FFP999 remembers them.]
wkat4242 3y ago
The first Ethernet was on coax yes. It was also a shared physical bus so the 10 megabit was often shared among a room full of computers. Despite this it felt speedy!! But times have changed a lot. In those days there was more focus on collision detection and avoidance which is no longer relevant with today's switches. Ps it was not the same coax as for TV. TV coax has 75 ohms impedance. Ethernet (and most radio equipment) uses 50 ohms. It was annoying not being able to those cable TV stuff but handy for me as a radio amateur to be able to use the same cables.
- FFP999 3y ago
  > Despite this it felt speedy!! When the most common data transfer technology is a POTS modem that can do 56kb/second...
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Think more like 2400 or 9600 bps actually :)
    - FFP999 3y ago
      True--I was talking more towards the end of the use of coax for Ethernet, which was also the peak of the dialup days.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        Oh yeah but then it wasn't really speedy anymore. At college we used to have rooms with 24 X-terminals with 1280x1024 screens - huge for the day. All on one single shared 10mbit! And wow it was speedy. Because all we did was locally rendered motif window managers, locally rendered fonts and widgets etc. Windows weren't moved animated but just the border was shown while moving. Fast forward to the 56k days and everyone was running mosaic and netscape scrolling to pages loaded with bitmap images, scrolling marquee text (server rendered usually) and animated under construction images. It was anything but speedy at that point - lol. From that point onwards things moved on really fast.
FFP999 3y ago
You remember correctly. This was the most common form of Ethernet cable when I was first starting out roughly 3,000 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2

michaelt 3y ago

Ah yes, "Thick Ethernet" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5 and "Thin Ethernet" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2 Ten whole megabits to share between up to 30 computers, on a single multidrop bus.

FFP999 3y ago
And if a single vampire tap comes loose, the entire network segment goes down. Don't miss that.
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
And 10BaseT! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair) Anybody else remember "vampire connections"? [Ah, a minute late. FFP999 remembers them.]

wkat4242 3y ago

The first Ethernet was on coax yes. It was also a shared physical bus so the 10 megabit was often shared among a room full of computers. Despite this it felt speedy!! But times have changed a lot. In those days there was more focus on collision detection and avoidance which is no longer relevant with today's switches. Ps it was not the same coax as for TV. TV coax has 75 ohms impedance. Ethernet (and most radio equipment) uses 50 ohms. It was annoying not being able to those cable TV stuff but handy for me as a radio amateur to be able to use the same cables.

FFP999 3y ago
> Despite this it felt speedy!! When the most common data transfer technology is a POTS modem that can do 56kb/second...
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Think more like 2400 or 9600 bps actually :)
  - FFP999 3y ago
    True--I was talking more towards the end of the use of coax for Ethernet, which was also the peak of the dialup days.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Oh yeah but then it wasn't really speedy anymore. At college we used to have rooms with 24 X-terminals with 1280x1024 screens - huge for the day. All on one single shared 10mbit! And wow it was speedy. Because all we did was locally rendered motif window managers, locally rendered fonts and widgets etc. Windows weren't moved animated but just the border was shown while moving. Fast forward to the 56k days and everyone was running mosaic and netscape scrolling to pages loaded with bitmap images, scrolling marquee text (server rendered usually) and animated under construction images. It was anything but speedy at that point - lol. From that point onwards things moved on really fast.

FFP999 3y ago

You remember correctly. This was the most common form of Ethernet cable when I was first starting out roughly 3,000 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2