3 Oct
2018
3 Oct
'18
3:34 p.m.
From: Noel Chiappa
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2018 5:49 AM
> From: Eric Smith
> 3 Mbps was sometimes referred to as experimental
Ethernet, but AFAIK
> the only official name was "Ethernet".
> The best way to refer to it is probably "3 Mbps Ethernet".
That's what almost we call it here at the museum. We have a Xerox PDP-11 3Mbit
Ethernet interface board in the front end of a DEC 1095 running WAITS, and a
3Mbit<->10Mbit bridge device that allows the Altos to talk to WAITS.
I was trying to remember what we called it at MIT
(which had one), but my
memory was hazy, so I want back and looked at the sources for the packet
switch I wrote (which supported the first Ethernet, before the 10Mbit version
even came out), and I found (slightly to my suprise) that it was "3Mbit
Experimental Ethernet", or just plain "Exerimental Ethernet". (Of course,
that
was just MIT - other sites may have had different terminology.) No doubt we
renamed it once the 10Mbit version showed up - I can probably search for early
versions of the code to confirm this, if anyone cares. Anyway, I'd vote for
the latter, short name.
At Stanford, we tended to call it the "PUP Ethernet" after 10Mbit came in.
> From: Bill Degnan
> See where wizards stay up lote by Katie Halner and
matthew lyon.
Interesting! It looks (from the Notes) like this was
gleaned from an interview
with Metcalfe, and she was _very_ careful (I helped her with the technical
details - you can find me in the Acks), so I'd tend to believe it.
My _guess_ is that was his early, 'in his
head' name for the thing, and when
they set out to actually build it, it was re-named 'Ethernet' (as Al's memo
search seems to indicate).
Of course, the very first baseband cable network at PARC was 1 megabit/second;
It may be that that is what got an Aloha name. But that's *my* guess.
Rich
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computers: Museum + Labs
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134
mailto:RichA at LivingComputers.org
http://www.LivingComputers.org/