[ih] TCP adoption in 1984

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Greg Skinner

    > What type of Ethernet (single cable, bridged LAN)?

Even more important, there are two very different 'Ethernets': The
'Experimental' 3MB Ethernet, and the 10MB DIX Ethernet. The former
considerably preceded the latter.


Xerox gave a large donation of Altos and associated gear (most notably
'Dover' laser printers) to MIT, Stanford and CMU; these all used only the 3MB
Ethernet. (I have been looking online for an original document which says
when this happened, but I can't find one. Some sources say it happened in
1978 , but it might have dribbled over into early 1979.)

Most of Stanford's internal LANs were 3MB Ethernet for quite some time. (They
had their own inter-LAN routers, but I got roped into providing a 'gateway'
(router) to connect Stanford's internal internet to the ARPANET. I have found
an early version of the config files for it, and it only had a 3MB Ethernet
interface for quite some time; a 10MB Ethernet was added somewhat later -
11/29/1983, to be exact.) I don't know much about what went on at CMU.

MIT only used the 3MB Ethernet for the Altos and the Dover; we had lots of
our own LANs. Dave Clark and I got into a contest: he was going to write a
TCP for the Alto, and I was going to produce a router to connect the Ethernet
to the internet in Tech Sq. I have a piece of paper, presented at a
celebration where Karen Sollins declared the outcome to be a tie, which is
dated 13 March, 1980. (We must have asked PARC for an Ethernet type for IP
packets; I see PUP was 01000, and IPv4 was 01001.)

	Noel