Ethernet marks 40th anniversary

Not many netizens may know this, but May 22 is a significant day for the Internet: it's the 40th anniversary of the Ethernet.

 

And not many netizens may realize the Ethernet is more than plugging a cable into a computer jack for Internet access: it's the foundation for today's high-speed communications.

 

"With more than 1.2 billion ports shipped in 2012 alone, Ethernet ranks highly among those technologies that impact day-to-day life on a global basis," the IEEE Standards Association said on its website.

 

It added the Ethernet today connects data center networks, PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, the smart grid, smart meters, personal medical devices, and even connected cars.

 

"(The) Ethernet touches them all in one way or another. And as Ethernet turns 40, it is poised for a new age of innovation," IEEE said.

 

IEEE said the Ethernet, developed in 1973, was an "innovative method allowing computers to send packets of information while avoiding collisions with incoming packets."

 

Over the last 40 years, it said Ethernet has matured as the basis of the IEEE 802.3 standard.

 

The standard specifies the "physical and lower software layers, and is the foundation for today's world of high-speed communications," it added.

 

A 2008 article on Wired.com said it was on May 22, 1973 that Bob Metcalfe of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center wrote a memo outlining how to connect PCs to a shared printer.

 

The plan, first dubbed "Alto Ethernet," had a schematic that described using a coaxial cable for connections and using data packets similar to the system of Hawaii's AlohaNet or the Defense Department's Arpanet.

 

With the plan implemented, the system began running on Nov. 11, 1973.

 

"Metcalfe didn't base the name ethernet on the anesthetic that puts people to sleep. It refers instead to a discredited scientific theory of the luminiferous aether, an undifferentiated universal medium that some 18th- and 19th-century scientists thought necessary for the propagation of light. Metcalfe saw it as an apt metaphor for a medium that would propagate information," Wired.com added.

 

Meanwhile, a separate article on CNET quoted Metcalfe as saying the present-day Internet has exceeded his expectations.

 

"By far, more each year, who would have guessed? We were building our own tools, and they escaped to serve uses unimagined," Metcalfe said at one of Reddit's Ask Me Anything sessions, when asked if the Internet exceeded his expectations. — TJD, GMA News