Ethernet names...

[Rich Alderson]

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

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