Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

How did he not get this earlier?

Well deserved. I remember dealing with a whole raft of other networking technologies and Ethernet stood head-and-shoulders above anything else available at the time.

One thing that is not well appreciated today is how power efficient Ethernet was, even on launch in the coax era. Other network technologies (Token Ring as embodied by IBMs network cards, for instance) consumed power like there was no tomorrow. Leading to someone quipping renaming it to 'smoking thing'.

As the price came down (around the NE1000/2000 and 3C509 era) it suddenly was everywhere and economies of scale wiped out the competition until WiFi came along. But even today - and as I'm writing this on my ethernet connected laptop - I prefer wired networks to wireless ones. They seem more reliable to me and throughput is constant rather than spotty, which weighs heavier to me than convenience.

So thank you Bob Metcalfe, I actually think this award is a bit late.

Anybody remember Don Becker?

Exactly. He really should have.

There’s a lot of inventions to award people for. Some of the other recipients look overdue by the time it came to them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award

Ah, the best and most readily available source of makeshift jumper wires. Truly an amazing contribution even in ways it wasn't quite designed to be :)