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The Evolution of the Ethernet Network

By Emily Collins


As many professionals in the communications technology field will agree, the ethernet network is like a pair of jeans. The design has existed for years and although there have been several improvements over time; the essential concept remains the same. Unlike looking into your wardrobe of boyfriend jeans, dark denim, and flares however, looking at the evolution of the ethernet network is not quite as apparent.

In 1973-74 the ethernet network was invented by Robert Metcalfe at Xerox PARC. Although as the patent was not filed until 1975 and the network system itself was not used at PARC until 1976, spreading some contention around these facts.

Robert worked as a researcher at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre and was responsible for creating a network system for Xerox's new computers and laser jet printer. The original ethernet network simply allowed computers to transmit data packets with one another using a shared coaxial cable. This enabled the computers to find one another with 48-bit destination and source addresses. The original ethernet network could transfer 10 million bits per second and in order to navigate and identify the appropriate sources to deliver data packets it used a 16-bit Ethertype type field.

The ethernet network was released onto the consumer market in the 1980s, at this time Token Ring and Token Bus were it's biggest competitors. However, the ethernet network was able to gain dominance over the market in the early 90s when it switched from a coaxial cable to twisted pair wiring.

The coaxial cable was initially fine, but the growing popularity of ethernet networks and the demands of media content meant that industry professionals needed to alter the technology. Collisions, where data packets collide with one another, happened frequently and this lead to a lost in transmitted information. The reason for this happening was that the original wiring cable was too small to cope with large extended networks. The ethernet network's thick cable was replaced by a smaller thinner cable intended to reduce costs and make installation an easier process.




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