[ih] "This is the History of Ethernet."

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: John Levine

    > It's quite impressive that forty years later Ethernet has the same
    > logical formats

In my IEEE personal memoir, "Early Token Ring Work at MIT":

  https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6828547

I observed that interfaces live forever, during which time the stuff on either
side of the interface usually changes out of all recognition. The example I
used was the screw base for light bulbs: they now connect nuclear power plants
to LED bulbs - neither of which was even _envisioned_ at the time the
interface was designed!

That is now true of packet formats; for networks (as here), and also for
internet-level protocols, too. I observed in something I wrote for IPng that
IP packet formats are used for two things: the host<->first hop router
interface, and the router<->router interface. I said this allowed us to
change the second (to provide enhanced functionality) without changing the
first.

	Noel