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Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

amturing.acm.org

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Re: Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

#31

Post by jacquesm »

themoonisachees wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't make heads or tails of your comment. What is scammy about Ethernet and what 'stupid margins' does Ethernet have? It's a networking standard, not a company.

2.5G or even 10G is not that much more expensive and companies making consumer electronics sell it as a considerable premium for what is essentially the same cost difference as making a 8gb vs 16 gb flash drive. Of course, regular internet users don't need more than 2.5G (and couldn't use it in most of the world due to ISP monopolies) so anything faster than gigabit is a target for segmentation.

But that has nothing to do with Ethernet as such, which isn't a 'company making consumer electronics'.

Re: Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

#32

Post by jacquesm »

Sporktacular wrote: post #22

Ethernet was always inefficient, with a crazy amount of unused legacy space reserved in an unnecessarily large header. CSMA/CD for contention was one of the ugliest medium access solutions imaginable. The coax implementation needing termination plugs was also ugly. Its advantage was cost, having had no license fees, making it suited to consumer/commercial applications driving economies of scale. It's the VHS of datac…

It was a lot less ugly than whatever else passed for networking standards at the physical level in those days.

Arcnet, Twinax, Token Ring and so on, I've probably used them all, and at scale. Compared to Ethernet they all sucked, besides being proprietary they were slow, prone to breaking in very complex to troubleshoot ways (though ethernet had its own interesting failure modes in practice it was far more reliable), and some used tons of power which made them unusable for quite a few applications. On top of that it was way cheaper and carried broad support from different vendors, which enabled competition and helped to improve it and keep prices low.

Re: Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

#33

Post by zokier »

wistlo wrote: post #25

The archetypal "good enough" solution: Instead of preventing collisions, tolerating and managing them. I think of Ethernet often when assessing how close to perfection I need to get in my work.

It is also lesson of doing something now and rewriting it later. For example no modern ethernet network uses cd/csma anymore and it was pretty iconic part of original ethernet. Overall ethernet on physical layer has seen quite an evolution from coax and vampire taps, to twisted pair and hubs, to switched networks, and nowdays wireless, single-pair, optical, and virtual networks

Re: Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

#34

Post by jacquesm »

wistlo wrote: post #25

The archetypal "good enough" solution: Instead of preventing collisions, tolerating and managing them. I think of Ethernet often when assessing how close to perfection I need to get in my work.

True, but it did detect transmission in progress (carrier sensing) which helped to avoid collisions in the first place.

Re: Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

#35

Post by asimpletune »

em-bee wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it allowed for all kinds of topologies, and that it served as a bus (shared medium, hence the name 'Ether') rather than a point-to-point link is what I think made the biggest difference. Of course now that we all use switched links they are point-to-point again but an ethernet 'hub' gave you the same effect as a bus with all devices seeing all of the traffic. This made efficient broadcast protocols poss…

for years i was carrying around an ethernet splitter that would allow me to connect two devices into one ethernet port. i last used it some 10 years ago in a place without wifi

Yeah, it’s a very cool trick that surprises a lot of people when they learn that only half the wires are used.

Re: Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

#36

Post by js8 »

OJFord wrote: post #14
tobylane wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It coming to Metcalfe for Ethernet 7 years after to Berners-Lee for the WWW is amusing though.

Perhaps they are giving it by OSI layers.

Re: Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

#37

Post by jacquesm »

asimpletune wrote: post #35
em-bee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for years i was carrying around an ethernet splitter that would allow me to connect two devices into one ethernet port. i last used it some 10 years ago in a place without wifi

Yeah, it’s a very cool trick that surprises a lot of people when they learn that only half the wires are used.

Not for gigabit ethernet and good luck picking up the pieces if you find yourself splitting a power-over-ethernet setup :)

Re: Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

#38

Post by caseysoftware »

caseysoftware wrote: post #24

Bob has been an active member of the Austin startup community for 10+ years and I've talked with him many times. As a EE, it was cool meeting him the first time and once I'd chatted with him a few times, I finally asked the question I'd been dying to ask: How'd you come up with "Metcalfe's Law"? Metcalfe's Law states the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of devices of the system. When I f…

Btw, when I say "an active member of the Austin startup community" - I mean that seriously.

Not only did he teach a class on startups at the University of Texas but regularly came to a coffee meetup for years, attended Startup Weekend demo time, came to Techstars Demo Day, and was generally present. I even got to do the Twilio 5 Minute Demo for one of his classes (circa 2012).

It was always cool to have someone who shaped our industry just hanging out and chatting with people.

Re: Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

#39

Post by Dalewyn »

themoonisachees wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't make heads or tails of your comment. What is scammy about Ethernet and what 'stupid margins' does Ethernet have? It's a networking standard, not a company.

2.5G or even 10G is not that much more expensive and companies making consumer electronics sell it as a considerable premium for what is essentially the same cost difference as making a 8gb vs 16 gb flash drive. Of course, regular internet users don't need more than 2.5G (and couldn't use it in most of the world due to ISP monopolies) so anything faster than gigabit is a target for segmentation.

Rant aside, I think there is an argument to be made that 2.5gbps switches "should" be cheaper now that 2.5gbps NICs have become fairly commonplace in the mainstream market.

Case in point, I have a few recent-purchase machines with 2.5gbps networking but no 2.5gbps switch to connect them to because I personally can't justify their cost yet.

I suppose I could bond two 1gbps ports together, or something, but I like to think I have other yaks to shave right now.

Re: Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

#40

Post by passwordoops »

caseysoftware wrote: post #24

Bob has been an active member of the Austin startup community for 10+ years and I've talked with him many times. As a EE, it was cool meeting him the first time and once I'd chatted with him a few times, I finally asked the question I'd been dying to ask: How'd you come up with "Metcalfe's Law"? Metcalfe's Law states the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of devices of the system. When I f…

HN comment of the year winner right here! Makes you wonder how many other laws are built on nothing.

If there's one thing I leaned doing a Ph.D. is if you dig deep enough, you find many foundational laws of nature rely on some necessary assumption that, if proven incorrect, would topple the whole thing

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