[ih] Early use of the "Internet" term (1977)

Fri Jun 14 14:53:51 PDT 2019

The fact that ARCnet was essentially a plug-and-play system for converting 3270 terminal clusters - wire and all - into PC clusters was a huge selling point for departmental computing in the mid ‘80s and beyond. With a Novell file & print server, 3270 emulation and file transfer on your PCs, a shared laser printer and a 3270 LAN gateway you were good to go.

Classic Ethernet’s biggest flaw was its lack of the star topology used for office power, phones, and 3270s. Multi-port transceivers for Cheapernet remedied this, but they were very pricey before 10BASE-T.

Metcalfe & crew believed active hubs would be bottlenecks, but that idea never made much sense; the active hub just needs to be as fast as each individual node.

RB 

> On Jun 14, 2019, at 2:30 PM, Gordon Peterson <gep2 at terabites.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 6/14/2019 3:02 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 3:52 PM Richard Bennett <richard at bennett.com <mailto:richard at bennett.com>> wrote:
>> The PARC Ethernet that immediately preceded Blue Book was 2.94 Mbps, not 3. The difference is greater than the bandwidth of ARPANET at the time. I think an even earlier prototype was 1 Mbps.
>> Right... in both cases.   One of the guys (Roger Bates IIRC), even calculated the number of bit of storage in the PARC network >>wires<< at one point.
> Bob Metcalfe's original "Ether"net was a wired version of the University of Hawaii's "Project Aloha", which was a radio-broadcast network...
>> 
>> These were both thin coax systems as thick net was a Blue Book designed-by-committee monstrosity with poor noise modeling.
>> Amen....
> Bob Metcalfe told me he was a big fan of the linear bus, even with the problems and vulnerabilities I pointed out (including ringing back from the taps, need to terminate ends, ability to take the whole bus down with a pin or paperclip, etc etc).  I told him that an "interconnected stars" topology was a lot better, but he persisted.... sigh...
> 
> I think it's worth noting that basically nobody still runs thick-wire linear bus Ethernet, and Ethernet didn't really get very successful until they finally adopted the ARCnet-style "interconnected stars" cabling topology based on hubs.
> 
>> A question for you: Was the ARCnet you are describing from Datapoint, the same technology as the 75 ohm coax ARCnet that was popular with Novell networks in the mid to late 1980s?   
> Actually it was 93 ohm, RG-62U, BNC connectors, but yes, their "RX-NET" was actually the exact same thing as Datapoint's ARCnet.  They (Datapoint ARC System and Novell RX-NET systems) coexisted nicely on the same ARCnet cable system, too.  ;-)  The wires and cabling and connectors were the same as IBM had used for their 2260 (and 3270 and following) terminals... so most big companies with such networks in place already were cabled for ARCnet.  ;-)   ARCnet is actually very tolerant, I'm told it will even run happily over coat-hanger wire.  ;-)
>> I remember it was originally less costly than the 'Blue Book' ethernet per port until NS and group came up with 'CheaperNet' (running it across 50 ohm wire thin wire and using BNC connectors). 
> The bigger advantages of ARCnet over Ethernet have to do with low-level protocols, fault tolerance, error recovery, electrical robustness, and a lot more.
>> 
>> 
>> RB
>> 
>>> On Jun 14, 2019, at 6:43 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu <mailto:jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> From: Jorge Amodio
>>> 
>>>> Thank you so much for your detailed response
>>> 
>>> Indeed, it was a fantastic and fascinating glimpse into a too-little-known
>>> corner of computing history.
>>> 
>>> For those who would like to know more, in addition to online sources, I can
>>> recommend "Datapoint: The Lost Story of the Texans Who Invented the Personal
>>> Computer Revolution", by Lamont Wood. (I'm not sure if those who were there,
>>> like Mr. Peterson, would consider it accurate, but it seemed to be to be quite
>>> good.)
>>> 
>>> Typical nugget: the Intel 8008 was not a descendant of the Intel 4004
>>> (although the production chips did use technology developed for the 4004), as
>>> commonly thought at one point; rather, it was developed for Datapoint
>>> (although they wound up building their own CPU out of discrete components).
>>> The 8008 developed into the 8080, and then the 8086... and I expect many of us
>>> are reading this on its descendants.
>>> 
>>>> I'll follow up on a private message so I don't get the rest of the list
>>>> bored with details.
>>> 
>>> Bored? Never! :-)
>>> 
>>> 
>>>>> On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 6:18 PM Gordon Peterson <gep2 at terabites.com <mailto:gep2 at terabites.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>>> (...and, at the time, Ethernet.... which wasn't a released product yet...
>>>>> was running at just 2 megabits
>>> 
>>> Minor nit - 3.
>>> 
>>>>> "Oh, Gordon," my colleagues told me.  "It's a good system, but you're
>>>>> crazy... big businesses will never give up their mainframes and run their
>>>>> processing on networks of little computers."
>>>>> I grinned at them and replied, "You just WATCH!"   :-)
>>> 
>>> I suspect many people on this list have had similar experiences! (In my case,
>>> circa mid-80s, telling my now-wife that one day everyone would have
>>> email... :-)
>>> 
>>> It would be interesting to collect stories about when we got glimpses of the
>>> future. I am particularly thinking of Craig's story about Swedish train
>>> timetables; my equivalent was going home to Bermuda at one point and seeing
>>> URL's painted on commercial vehicles.
>>> 
>>>      Noel
>>> _______
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>>> Contact list-owner at postel.org <mailto:list-owner at postel.org> for assistance.
>> 
>> —
>> Richard Bennett
>> High Tech Forum <http://hightechforum.org/> Founder
>> Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator
>> 
>> Internet Policy Consultant
>> 
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>> ᐧ
> 
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Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator

Internet Policy Consultant

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