Bit sad how he didn't mention that once a collision is detected, all sending machines "scream" for a short amount of time to announce to everyone that a collision just occurred and retransmission would be attempted shortly

The bit of expert improv at 5:50 that both Sean and Steve immediately picked up on was *chef's kiss*

I worked with Sailesh Rao, the inventor of 1000 Base-T (802.3ab-1999) at Intel (and Level One) - every time I plug an Ethernet cable into a router. I remember him scribbling "the architecture of 4D-PAM5 encoding, with 4 lines each transferring 250 Mb/s" on a white board and saying, "give me the BER for this on CAT-5 - maybe use Matlab!"

Ethernet won out because the standard was free to use, and also did not need you to pay a license fee per card, unlike some of the competitors, like Token Ring, where you had to pay IBM for it, and Arcnet did not scale as well, even though it did use a very much cheaper cable, but in the end Ethernet would run on the same cables, and being low cost the cards got cheap fast, and of course got used a lot, so the peripherals grew fast, and the cost kept dropping. Still have the crimp tooling for Arcnet, which came in really handy doing CCTV work, as the connectors are almost completely compatible in most cases.

Steve's struggle with the sticker at 8:47 and Sean's strategic zoom-in was both clever and unintentionally hilarious

I got a job as a researcher in one of my university's tech labs in 1997, and it was just the time when thick ethernet (10base5) was over and everybody was laying thin ethernet cables (10base2) through every PC, with the T-adapters and terminating resistors :) And then of course after some time we changed to 10baseT and it was at first somewhat puzzling having to have a separate cable for each PC. At first it was to hubs (sort of dummy repeaters) but later switches started to became the norm. Ahh the nostalgia!

It would be amazing to make a video describing the CAN network used in modern vehicles and industrial automation. The csma/cd and bus arbitration techniques are simple and elegant, and the protocol is a superb illustration of how multi-drop networks can be implemented in embedded systems for sending and control.

I have a memory of reading a Usenet post where one of the original ethernet designers said if he could change one thing in 10base5 it would be the slide lock connectors on the drop cables. That made me smile, we had lots of hassles with them.

Great video. As a networking nerd I work with Ethernet all the time and it’s simplicity and yet it’s ingenuity always surprises me.

Bus networks really take me back, I remember in my first year at senior school having an IT room full of Acorn Archimedes and if we all logged on at the same time it would seriously slow down and eventually would crash the whole network! I think we were using Acorn proprietary cables though instead of ethernet and it was running on Acorn's EcoNet standard.

Thank heavens they didn’t stick to the DIX name. The recent CHM panel video is truly excellent. Yes, vampire taps weren’t friendly and often resulted in a trip to find bandages. AUI connectors we’re still used quite a bit into the mid, and even late, 90’s, especially on what we now call MDF switches. Also, promiscuous mode is a modern concept, switches didn’t exist originally, only hubs and bridges. You could see everything, everywhere from anywhere. And of course, 10-BASE-T, full-duplex with separate TX/RX pairs into switches (instead of hubs) ultimately all but eliminated collisions.

Xerox PARC came up with some of the best tech innovations of all time, Ethernet is high up there.

It became popular precisely because you could freely plug or unplug a machine without bringing down the network

That cybersecurity lab environment looks like a lot of fun. A designated "red" and "blue" sides with a retractable padded wall to keep the teams apart during labs.

Superb video! Happy 50th, Ethernet.

The resiliency of modern ethernet is impressive. It'll run even without all wires connected. At a certain point i was running it on some weird 6 wire intercom or phone cable that i have no idea of, how it ended up on my PC. It did explain why i wasn't getting the usual speed. Another interesting occurance was when i suffered from a lot of radio interference. Took me until i noticed my ethernet connection was running at 10mbit that i re-inserted the plug, and the interference was gone. Evidently again not all of the contacts of the plug made good contact, making it a non-paired cable, radiating tons of RF hash. Aside from those freak issues, wired ethernet has been that old, rock solid technology that just works all the time. Only thing that sucks is trying to make your own cables with low budget tools.

I just love it at around 03:30 ... they have images of the BBC machine (sans monitor) connected to each other!

Even today, I'm still using scrapped 30+ year old 10BASE2 networking cables (with BNC connectors) to build antennas and use as radio feedlines. I grabbed a lifetime supply when it was being thrown out.

Great video! My first network at home was a 10base2 beast in 1994 . Two PCs running Windows for Workgroups 3.11 equipped with ex rental NE2000 clone network cards. I ran the RG58 coax on the floor along skirting boards.

In the beginning of the video I'm so focused on UTP and switches it tool a while to realize he was talking about the original thick wire and vampire taps. Great overview about early Ethernet.

My dad installed many Arcnet networks with twisted pair. We had a nice Indiana Jones Poster, with whip in hand, fighting network cables like snakes. It was Titled, Raiders of the lost Arcnet! Probably contemporary of the film, it would be great to find it.

Just.. brilliant. Thank you

Thanks for the trip down memory lane a lot of my youth was spent working all that stuff. At the time i wasn't totally convinced and then in 1977 i saw Star Wars and the hole picture came into focus 😊

Hey as an American let me just say, go ahead and use metric exclusively. The types of people who would voluntarily click on a video about the 50th anniversary of Ethernet are going to be fine thinking about and understanding meters.

Still use RJ8 coax cable in some situations! Just a couple years ago I installed an internal LTE network in an office building, and all the antennas and their controllers were wired up using RJ8. A couple miles of the stuff, all told, though none of the runs were more than a couple hundred feet. It was quite the job, because that cable ain't light lol. Glad I don't have to do that again, in-wall structured CAT6 is enough of a PITA for me!

Watching this video through a 1000Base-T that goes to a switch where it goes over a 1000Base-SX fiber then to another switch where it goes to a 10GBase-SR to my router where it goes back down to a 1000Base-T and then to my ISP via a 1000Base-EX. Long live Ethernet!

"The one network, to rule them all, even though it's not a ring network." The fact he said it..... Groan. The fact they left in the video....... O...M...G! Nerds! 🙄🙄🙄

We always called them bee-sting connectors. The thick coax was the 'backbone' and then thinner coax was used to connect to the computers via BNC connectors. If you unplugged the wrong BNC connector all the downstream computers went off line! Happy days :)

Brilliant video.

I don't miss hubs and their collision light. Thank goodness for switches.

My first network was with coax cables and properly soldered BNC connectors, T pieces and terminators. I still use it on three old computers.

Switching seems like a much more elegant solution for collisions but of course that would be obvious in hindsight. They put a lot of work into solving that problem! Awesome to see the birth of a technology we all still rely on

Ethernet, or the Thin Ethernet developed later was the basis of my career working for a DEC Distributor in the late 80's, configuring & specifying ethernet cards & minicomputers, routers, repeaters, bridges and software. I even designed a colour graphic info "Configurator" to show off and sell all the kit DEC made for Ethernet.

Many thanks. I learned lots. Thanks also to PARK, who by now must be owed a medal of honour from the USA government or president for their contribution on so many levels.

Collisions are NOT detected by detecting corrupted data. Collisions are detected by the cable having DOUBLE VOLTAGE since two carriers are interfering! Then all stations have the responsibility to shout collision! It's an ANALOG process, not digital. The stations don't need to store and compare date to detect a collision. Remember which decade we're talking about!!

Ethernet relay came into its own when network switching became affordable. Then with full duplex no collisions. A bus network that became a star or hub spoke network.

I love learning about networking.

Aged like fine wine

i love it, thank you

The newer standards above 1Gb have dropped the collision detection overhead and require fully switched subnets(No systems using those speeds would use a shared bus anyway.).

I was wiring offices when there were many standards. Ethernet was the most reliable network, by far.

Happy Birthday Ethernet, we love you 😍

Hahaha you guys. Adlibbed the two computers talking at the same time and didn't even crack a smile.

And, whenever Ethernet failed, we resorted to "Sneakernet", which meant walking a floppy with the files over to the other machine, and manually loading/copying it... ;-)

Ethernet with Demand Priority Tokens was invented by HP & was called 100VG-ANYLAN. It was conceptually sound but a commercial failure due to its expense.

I did a lot of vampire tapping to AUI converters. UTP is so much easier and better. Like all computer technology, you came up with something that worked, and hoped it became the standard. When it did, no matter the shortcomings, it was the thing you did.

Installing vampire taps was fun, specialized tools and all, we all love tools. Do you have a link to the original memo? It looks like one of those fun RFCs of h past.

*raises glass* Happy Birthday, Ethernet!

Thanks for video. Ehternet

Those sharp spikes make me think about a title for a documentary or history book, “Blood and Ethernet”

Long live Ethernet

As soon as the diagram started i had flashbacks to today's numberphile video. Coincidence that you're both touching the same topic?

I remember token ring from when I worked at American Express in Brighton. It solved the issue of collisions as your computer could only talk if it had the token.

where on earth do they get that line printer paper from? I haven't seen that stuff since the 1990's!!

I didn't know Computerphile was based in Nottingham! I'd love to pick your brains!

Happy International Amiga Day. I remember the IBM storage ring architecture, rings were a cool idea but switches solved the problem for ethernet and that was that.

Shared wires are still in use. Canbus in vehicles, modbus on power lines

I started my IT career with 10Base2 aka RG58 aka cheapernet. Ah, the good old days. 😉

I can remember installing these and getting serial printers to work using netcat. RS422 was a nightmare

Basically all modern systems and the way we engage to them (including GUI and the mouse), are from Xerox.

I wonder if it's possible to make a bus network with twisted pair cables, without needing additional electronics. Like just get a bunch of cat 5, and make T junctions through the wires inside. Ethernet the protocol should be able to work with that, right? Might be useful in a pinch.

Funny how the problem of connecting computers together is very similar to the problem discussed in the Brick Factory video that was just uploaded on the other channel!

From Ethernet to SkyNet in 50 years. Not bad.

sounds like he is describing 10Base-5 (thick net) / 10Base-2 (thin Net) or other coax based networks. I wonder is that the origins of the AUI port?

No mention for David Boggs, recently passed away?

Hypothetically can you still have a Bus for modern connections then? Like port 1 on a switch has an ethernet cable which gets tapped by two devices for example?

This brings back memories. I ran my first Ethernet cables to connect some VAX machines back in the 80s. The big debate back then was Ethernet versus token ring. Ethernet won.

happy birthday ethernet

I'd guess Ethernet ended up winning because of the Ne1000 and NE2000 PC network cards and clones They gave cheap networking for dos and Windows right when people were really starting to need/want networking. They were cheap enough they even managed to enter the consumer market. They were what you needed for Doom giving huge Marketshare to ethernet

Yeah its pretty good👍

03:56. My company actually recently released a new software revision - It has been Rev A, Rev B, Rev C, and now Rev 4. No joke.

I have worked with a variety of networks in the past, but none compare to Ethernet.

I remember having Ethernet with external AUI boxes at our high school in 1985 .

Wow, I haven't seen dot matrix printer paper in forever! I didn't know they still made that stuff 😂

The discussion of collision handling with Ethernet here has got me thinking of CAN, and I don't know if anybody has more insights to add here but it seems to me that CAN has better collision handling than Ethernet. There are error counters, arbitration by the electrical "open collector" style of the transceivers, and messages can be prioritized accordingly. Aside from that, the main difference practically speaking between the two network protocols that I can think of off the top of my head is the supported distance by CAN transceivers + protocol standards (I think it's 40m or less) and the speed limitation (I think the most I've seen is 2Mbit/s) compared to Ethernet.

A friend of mine referred 10-base-5 as "frozen yellow garden hose". 🙂

Never have seen 10BASE5 before. Noice. It was part of a class I took way back in 2009, but never actually saw any of the equipment.

@7:48; Wait - so Ethernet was supposed to be essentially a similar naming intent as "Cloud computing" has? That's interesting - and something I hadn't considered until you mention that there.

A big part of Ethernet winning was that the token ring networks which were competing with them had highly restrictive licensing fees.

“Even though it’s not a ring network…” I see you, combo-nerd! 😉

Adding another computer and connecting it to all the previous ones makes the number of cabels grow quadratically if I'm not mistaken.

I'm old enough to remember the cable piercing method.

what is the exact network card model in the Atari Mega ST, pretty please?

When I was first trying to setup a home network with 2 PCs, I asked a friend to being a network card and he has bought a Token ring card instead of a Ethernet card. I still have that card somewhere.

I was really confused at the 6:00 mark! Media access is quite the important component

I with ther could be a standard PoDL for any Base T and not only the new base T1S/L... PoE is nice but way overkilled for IoT or anything requiring little power on the other end 🎄🖖

My favorite networking choice was Token Ring.... If I have a lab of 20 computers, and they all need to be re-flashed with an new OS from a Novell server, it was at least 15 times faster on Token Ring (1 hour), than it was on Ethernet (12-14hours).. I wonder why Token Ring never became a viable competitor to Ethernet ?? Anyone know why ?

We used to love shouting "don't step on the vampire!" when anyone got near the 10B5 boxes :-P

1:24 Would quite like to be in that lab.

So what are example of the first setup he drew with a cable for every machine?

🎉

Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet such a lovely technologies I was working with

How far backwards compatible is ethernet? If one took an ethernet cable today and connected multiple computers to it would it work or have all of the work to make that function been left by the road side so everything would break?

"even though it's not a ring network" *GROAN*

I wish the collision detection mechanism was discussed in greater depth. Because, if a device is transmitting at the same time it is receiving, wouldn't it just hear its own transmission? Perhaps this topic requires an electrical engineer to explain.

"They react to the state of the room and I shall leave it that" Oh come on. You've got to explain that.

Just as a note. If you tried to connect via the T connections you showed the network would not function. Each tap would act like a tuning stub. Instead there was a T BNC connector on the network card - the cable came in one side and went out the other. The network was terminated with 50 ohm connectors to stop end reflections due to impedance mismatch.

Steve you're looking healthy, mate! Lost a lot of weight. Best wishes!

"weird inches and feet" PSA Brits, Canadians, and Australians aren't allowed to be snarky about units if you measure weight in stone and use other imperial units in everyday life.

📺💬 Talking a bit about C-Link, there is a long kilometer distance communication and they plan ahead to use the cable building to create distance communication by inputting the transceiver that works as a printer hub, that is because not only amplitudes of signals or signal quality but it working as channels that are different than a printer hub when printer A also can read printer B and when it is hardware problem normally they patch computer with software for the different port number, serials or parallel does not required port number at that time but with address port number they can work on a shared environment and multiple devices or full connected port setting. 📺💬 We talking about computer communications and the selection packages of computers... I would like to see about the printer hub that is working as a transceiver. 🥺💬 It is all the same but later created by delay messages for in/out as transceiver with address or virtual port that is because you are asking in Thailand someone build this tools working as transceivers about 30 years ago and somebody claims on the same technology but it widely used and benefits all then OS company adding features for multiple devices support and I think the problem stops at the time with technology solved, someone claims the technology is on their side. 📺💬 That is collision networks we can detect communication and we can stop receiving or stop the way they transmitting messages ... 🥺💬 Yes are correct, in this method the collision method if some bad networks happen at any point without a transceiver it causes communication to continue to the next receiver not continue but with a transceiver it can detect and select an alternate option, that is ring networks in the beginning there is no transceiver and use computer as transceiver then you need to power on them to work and I understand that with ethernet it make networks more comfortable way to use. ( I order the network development as the topics Ethernet ) 📺💬 Shared access for the share mediums 🥺💬 I still have a question about transceivers because it is allowed networks device by the policy when algorithms select do not allowed.