Networking standards started picking winners during the PC revolution of the 80’s and 90’s. Ethernet, with the first standards announced in 1983, ended up beating out pretty much other LAN standard at the physical layer (physical plugs, voltages and other ways of indicating signals) and the data link layer (the structure of a MAC address or an Ethernet frame). And this series of standards been improved many times over, with meta standards about how to deal with so many generations of standards through autonegotiation and backwards compatibility.
We generally expect Ethernet to just work, at the highest speeds the hardware is capable of supporting.
networking standards were a mess before ethernet really fucking cooked with twisted pair wiring.
Ethernet had already existed for a little bit prior to this, and most other alternatives were actively being worked on at the time, and relatively similar to ethernet, save for the general technical implementation, token ring as opposed to the funny broadcast meta. But when ethernet was able to just barely get ahead and use twisted pair, the entire thing came crumbling down and everyone agreed that ethernet over twisted pair, with switched star topology was the best.
Fucking coax, literally the bane of anybody anywhere, fucking horrible standard. Works well, which is the only reason anybody uses it, it’s just a nightmare. (if you have ever dealt with a coax cable, you know exactly what i mean)
Offices were already wired up with phone lines, which often had redundant lines running to each endpoint, meaning you could just hook straight into the existing wiring infrastructure, and convert it to ethernet (very accessible and cheap)
twisted pair comes with the advantage of noise reduction over longer distances, cheaper construction, and significantly simpler wire structure, making it easier to route, manage, terminate, and just generally exist around. (basically the same as the first one lmao)
It was actually so much of a problem, that the original ethernet standard, based on RG-6? I think, don’t quote me on it, ended up moving to a smaller coax standard and was referred to as “thinnet” as it was thinner coax and easier to work with.
Networking standards started picking winners during the PC revolution of the 80’s and 90’s. Ethernet, with the first standards announced in 1983, ended up beating out pretty much other LAN standard at the physical layer (physical plugs, voltages and other ways of indicating signals) and the data link layer (the structure of a MAC address or an Ethernet frame). And this series of standards been improved many times over, with meta standards about how to deal with so many generations of standards through autonegotiation and backwards compatibility.
We generally expect Ethernet to just work, at the highest speeds the hardware is capable of supporting.
networking standards were a mess before ethernet really fucking cooked with twisted pair wiring.
Ethernet had already existed for a little bit prior to this, and most other alternatives were actively being worked on at the time, and relatively similar to ethernet, save for the general technical implementation, token ring as opposed to the funny broadcast meta. But when ethernet was able to just barely get ahead and use twisted pair, the entire thing came crumbling down and everyone agreed that ethernet over twisted pair, with switched star topology was the best.
What’d twisted pair bring to the table? Noise reduction?
three primary things.
Fucking coax, literally the bane of anybody anywhere, fucking horrible standard. Works well, which is the only reason anybody uses it, it’s just a nightmare. (if you have ever dealt with a coax cable, you know exactly what i mean)
Offices were already wired up with phone lines, which often had redundant lines running to each endpoint, meaning you could just hook straight into the existing wiring infrastructure, and convert it to ethernet (very accessible and cheap)
twisted pair comes with the advantage of noise reduction over longer distances, cheaper construction, and significantly simpler wire structure, making it easier to route, manage, terminate, and just generally exist around. (basically the same as the first one lmao)
It was actually so much of a problem, that the original ethernet standard, based on RG-6? I think, don’t quote me on it, ended up moving to a smaller coax standard and was referred to as “thinnet” as it was thinner coax and easier to work with.