Webinar: Ethernet's Emergence from Xerox PARC: 1975-1980

[Paul Koning]

> On Mar 28, 2022, at 2:12 PM, Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> That was the ALOHA network, which inspired Ethernet but was not Ethernet.

The differences are quite crucial.  ALOHA is a broadcast radio packet network, which doesn't have collision detect and probably not carrier sense either.  So it's about 1/3rd of Ethernet -- just MA. :-)  A consequence is that the theoretical channel capacity is also about 1/3rd; ALOHA tops out around 30% of data rate, while Ethernet -- thanks to CS and CD -- can reach pretty much the full wire capacity.

	paul