Ethernet, a physical layer local area network (LAN) technology, Can be said to be at its nearly 30 years old. it is widely used LAN technology because of its speed, low cost, and relative ease of installation. This is combined with wide computer-market acceptance and the ability to support the majority of network protocols.
Ethernet Standards
The first Metcalfe system ran at 2.94 Mb/s, but by 1980 DEC, Intel, and Xerox (DIX) issued a DIX Ethernet standard for 10 Mb/s Ethernet systems. That same year, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) commissioned a committee to develop open network standards. In 1985, this committee published
the portion of the standard pertaining to Ethernet (based on the DIX standard)—IEEE 802.3 Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) Access Method and Physical Layer Specifications. Even though the IEEE title does not mention Ethernet, Metcalfe’s original term for his network system had caught on, and IEEE 802.3 was and is referred to as the Ethernet standard. Note: The IEEE standard was called 802 because work on it started in February 1980. As described in Table 1, many more Ethernet standards have been created since 1985. The IEEE standards have been adopted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and by the International Organization of Standards (ISO). Now the ISO standardization means that companies and organizations around the world use these standards when manufacturing Ethernet products and installing Ethernet network systems.
Ethernet History
Robert Metcalfe, an engineer at Xerox, first described the Ethernet network system he invented in 1973. The simple, yet innovative and, for its time, advanced system was used to interconnect computer workstations, sending data between workstations and printers. Metcalfe’s Ethernet was modeled after the Aloha network developed in the 1960s at the University of Hawaii. However, his system detected collisions between...