Turing Award goes to Robert Metcalfe, co-inventor of the Ethernet
- Reference: 1679576650
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/03/23/turing_award_goes_to_robert/
- Source link:
Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was just a few years old when Metcalfe arrived and set up the lab with that internet precursor, ARPANET.
But that didn't connect the hundred new Alto personal computers and laser printers, so Metcalfe drew on his experiences with the University of Hawaii's AlohaNet, and together with the late [1]David Boggs built a hundred node network - now known as the first Ethernet - in two years.
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The network, originally a single wire bus with a single transceiver per node, was eventually replicated across Xerox until it became a corporate internet, and then an internet for the world.
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"When David and I were building this thing at PARC, we planned to run a cable up and down every corridor to actually create an omnipresent, completely passive medium for the propagation of electromagnetic waves. In this case, data packets," Metcalfe previously [5]told The Register .
That first Ethernet ran at 2.94 megabits per second, a rate 10,000 times faster than the terminal networks before it. The design was documented in a 1976 article titled [6]"Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks."
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Leading a team, Metcalfe then developed the 10Mbps Ethernet which standards are now based on.
"It is rare to see a technology scale from its origins to today's multigigabit-per-second capacity," [8]said ACM president Yannis Ioannidis. "Even with the advent of Wi-Fi, Ethernet remains the staple mode of data communication, especially when security and reliability are prioritized."
[9]And the Turing Award for best compilation goes to... Jeffrey Ullman and Alfred Aho
[10]ARPANET pioneer Jack Haverty says the internet was never finished
[11]'Mother of Internet' Radia Perlman argues for centralized infrastructure
[12]Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell
Metcalfe's invention soon became as ubiquitous in some parts of the world as aircon or indoor plumbing, in fact it is referred to as "the internet's standard plumbing." By 2008, IDC pegged worldwide Ethernet switch ports at 350 million. That number doesn't include Wi-Fi gear. The analyst firm reported worldwide Ethernet values for the full year 2022 at $36.5 billion.
"Today, with an estimated 7 billion ports around the globe, Ethernet is so ubiquitous that we take it for granted," commented Google exec Jeff Dean.
Metcalfe went on to do many things, like founding 3Com Corporation where he introduced the technology to the likes of Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). He also worked as a venture capitalist and for a decade wrote a column called "From The Ether" for InfoWorld Magazine. And for roughly 11 years, he was a professor at The University of Texas at Austin.
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"David Boggs and I built the first Ethernet and in this picture David holds our 0th Ethernet interface card. I am holding the 500,000th Ethernet NIC designed, manufactured, marketed, sold, and supported by 3Com," Metcalfe commented Thursday on a picture the Association for Computing Machinery posted on [14]LinkedIn .
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Bob Metcalfe
"The internet turned 50 in 2019. The most important new fact about the human condition is that we are now suddenly connected," said the Turing Award winner in his [16]LinkedIn bio.
The law that bears his name states the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its connected users. This initially described compatible communicating devices but now reflects more globalized users and networks.
But Metcalfe isn't afraid to have a sense of humor about himself. One of his most bizarre public appearances was eating a printed copy of one of his columns, blended with added liquid, at a conference. The boffin had predicted the internet would suffer a "catastrophic collapse" in his column in 1996 and promised to eat his words if he was wrong. He was held to it.
The Turing Award comes with a cool $1 million. Financial support is provided by Google. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/01/david_boggs_obituary/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZByFtI-WGHrgo4RtyybeBAAAAJY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZByFtI-WGHrgo4RtyybeBAAAAJY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZByFtI-WGHrgo4RtyybeBAAAAJY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/01/david_boggs_obituary/
[6] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/360248.360253
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZByFtI-WGHrgo4RtyybeBAAAAJY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://amturing.acm.org/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/01/turing_award/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/01/the_internet_is_so_hard/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/02/mother_of_internet_radia_perlman/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/10/jeffrey_snover_said_microsoft_demoted/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZByFtI-WGHrgo4RtyybeBAAAAJY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/association-for-computing-machinery_awardwinning-pioneer-computing-activity-7044231265746608128-FAaS
[15] https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/03/23/rob_metcalfe.jpg
[16] https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertmmetcalfe/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
At uni in 96/97, our lecturer was adamant that Ethernet was going to die off and be replaced by ATM networking. What I think changed was that Ethernet moved from the thin-net coax with all its myriad of problems with packet collisions, lost terminators etc and moved to a fully switched and duplex configuration, making it reliable and far less prone to collisions.
I also find it amusing that it was based on Aloha net which was wireless into a wired protocol and now it's come full circle into a wireless protocol again with Wifi.
Well done to Robert Metcalfe and all those who have had a part in developing and maintaining something we all rely on day to day!
With modern networks being point-point through smart switches with QoS and other information in the packet, isn't it closer to ATM than original collision-detect shared wire ethernet?
I recall reading a book on networks by Tennenbaum*, I think, where he claimed that Ethernet was designed by people who wanted something that actually worked, rather than 'just another standard' that no one would use. I think it is safe to say Metcalfe and Boggs were successful.
Cheers!
*Well, bits of it, not the whole thing, although it was well written, it was a bit too technical for me at the time.
If the first implementation of something doesn't involve a lot of wire wrap and sticky tape it won't be a success
Drop out
i'm hoping Robert's many outstanding accomplishments didn't include the design of the easily damaged cat5 plug. See title.
Re: Drop out
cat5 plug ? - younglings
It was vampire tap or nothing (although sometimes crucifixes and holy water were also necessary to get networks to work)
Re: Drop out
No such thing as a Cat5 plug. You probably mean RJ45. Category 5 specifies the cable, not the terminations.
Don't blame Metcalf for CAT 5 plug
Way back in the day at CMU, I actually used the original 3 Mbit Ethernet, due to CMU's having received a grant from Xerox PARC of a dozen or so Altos, a Dover laser printer and a bunch of Ethernet cards. My recollection was that the Ethernet was just a long Cable TV cable, and each machine on it would tap into by drilling a hole through the outside of the cable until the core wire was exposed. You then inserted a "tap" which was just a probe that touched the central wire. Adding a tap, however, often caused signal reflections around that spot.
All those reflections from new taps meant that adding new machines could disrupt the signal for other connected machines on the cable. Adding new machines to a cable was basically an art since doing anything meant that every pair of machines on the cable had to be rechecked to make sure the reflections didn't mess up communications between those two machines.
Point to point cabling was a welcome and important improvement over this. OTOH, the single cable approach worked better than you'd have thought. CMU's Andrew project started using the single cable approach.
Re: Don't blame Metcalf for CAT 5 plug
My first use of ethernet was 10base2: it used coax cable similar to TV coax (but 50 ohm impedance rather than 75 ohm). Fortunately, we didn't have to drill into the cable: we had BNC T-pieces. And 50-ohm terminators to put on the T's at the far ends. Maximum length end-to-end was 185 metres.
The whole network would die, either if someone's foot got caught in the cable and pulled it out, or if a dodgy network card would start randomly chattering. Finding the computer with the dodgy NIC was a tricky game of divide-and-conquer, repeatedly dividing the network into halves and putting a terminator at each end.
It was a happy day when we got 10baseT hubs and Cat5/RJ45. Whilst it was still one big collision domain - only one device could transmit at once - the hub could detect a chattering device and block the port.
Re: Don't blame Metcalf for CAT 5 plug
10base2 was a lot easier to use than the older 10base5. 10base5 cable was a lot thicker and more rigid and usually yellow with black stripes. The black stripes marked where you were allowed to attach another node, by drilling a hole and then pushing spikes into the cable. It was a black art. 10base2 as you say just used BNC tee-pieces and terminators. That was a relief when it arrived. The later 10baseT was a bit of a mixed blessing originally, with the difficult connectors and completely dumb hubs etc that mad fault-finding difficult sometimes.
'Legend' is an over-used word, these days, but Bob definitely is one.