[ih] "The First Router" on Jeopardy

[Tony Li]

> On Nov 22, 2021, at 4:11 PM, Guy Almes via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>  A later language shift came a few years later, when the word 'bridge' became old-fashioned and people (or was this just marketing?) began to use the word 'switch' to refer to a high-performance bridge.  And, later, the word 'switch' was used also for level-3 packet forwarding.
>  I do not recall where that came from, but did notice it.


The word ‘switch’ was introduced by Kalpana as a marketing term for their ASIC implementation of a bridge. They went that direction because bridging had become a four letter word and they needed to reframe the market. They were successful at that to the point where router vendors started touting ‘level-3 switches’ in an attempt to further confuse the market. It was too late, the damage was done.

T