Member Avatar for August AlieN

When was the original Ethernet design foreseen?
I don't know this question.
Plz try to help me and explain for me.
Thank you.

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As began the thread, short origin answers are common. Two clarifications cut through the typical confusion: one is the first lab/demo of the idea, and the other is when that idea was formalized and widely deployed. Those are different events with different dates.

A few useful follow-ups people often miss: the concept was written up in a mid‑1970s technical paper as an experimental packet‑switching LAN. Industry later converged on a 10 Mbit/s profile (the vendor consortium spec often called "DIX") and the IEEE formalized that work as 802.3 in the early 1980s. Early commercial media names you’ll see in period sources are 10Base5 (thick coax) and 10Base2 (thin coax); twisted‑pair 10Base‑T came later and helped Ethernet spread into offices.

Technical context helps explain why the timeline stretches: the original demos used a single shared medium and a carrier‑sense/collision‑detection method (CSMA/CD) to allow multiple nodes to transmit. Those demos ran at a few megabits per second; the later 10 Mbps profile became the common baseline. Over the next two decades Ethernet evolved through Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps), Gigabit, 10 Gigabit, etc., and migrated from shared coax segments to switched, point‑to‑point links.

If a single short answer is required: the experimental concept and paper appeared in the mid‑1970s; the industry standard and mass adoption followed around 1980–1983. For deeper, citable detail consult the original packet‑switching LAN paper and the IEEE 802.3 standardization history rather than brief encyclopedia summaries. As noted, terse answers work for homework, but the fuller history clarifies the distinction between invention, publication, and standardization.

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Member Avatar for rubberman

The original ethernet was invented by Robert Metcalf at the Xerox Parc (Palo Alto Research Center) in California in 1973-74. Here is the Wikipedia article about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet

Its design was inspired by the ALOHAnet and incorporated by Metcalf in his PhD thesis.

FWIW, I have personally known Metcalf since the early 1980's when I sold 3-Com Corporation their first 100 IBM PC's.

Member Avatar for Greg_z

rubberman, you do realize that you just did someone else's homework for them.

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