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Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

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Re: Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

#61

Post by adrian_b »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #41
londons_explore wrote: post #36

I wish layer 2 and layer 3 were 'refactored' to force all links to be point to point, which they effectively are in the modern world. When was the last time you saw ethernet frame collisions because you used a hub not a switch? We'd get rid of the idea of a broadcast domain. We'd get rid of Mac address and ARP. Switches and routers would become the same device. We'd just use ip addresses for routing, and the 'next ho…

All wifi is a giant collision domain. Also, each segment of a wired network is a collision domain. What you are describing is more in line with MPLS or Infiniband. I agree with you frustration. I prefer to design networks that start routing right at the access port or even using an agent, virtual network port, or VPN endpoint at the client or application (like QUIC), but that is very expensive from a resource standpo…

WiFi uses a different protocol than classic Ethernet, with "Collision Avoidance" instead of "Collision Detection". The reason is that one WiFi station cannot know what sources of radio interference exist at the other stations of a network, because it may hear only a part of them at its location.

So all remnants of the original Ethernet could be removed from wired Ethernet, which does not need layer 2 protocols, while keeping adequate layer 2 protocols for wireless communications. Besides WiFi, there are also long-range point-to-point wireless links, where directive antennas are used at both ends. For these, there is no difference from wired links, so they do not need layer 2 protocols.

Re: Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

#62

Post by yusyusyus »

Hikikomori wrote: post #24
betaby wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSI is very widely used, most of the large ISPs use it. End consumers are just unaware of that fact. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IS-IS

Would call it stretch to say it was widely used by ISPs. Some old ones may still be using integrated IS-IS as their IGP (early OSPF had scaling issues and complicated solutions for that), but that's nothing like widely using the ISO stack. But they might have used IS-IS it to route NSAP in their network at some point in time to manage ATM-era equipment, the ISP I worked still had some ctunnels for that purpose, I dou…

still good reasons to choose IS-IS for greenfield :) hell, they took IS-IS and did TRILL with it for DC (rip TRILL).

but yeah, I saw one piece of SONET crap hanging off a ctunnel that spoke CLNP back in maybe 2012 or 2013? haven't seen much of it, but still learned the ctunnel stuff back in '09 because it still could occasionally rear its head.

Re: Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

#63

Post by zik »

rjsw wrote: post #57
fanf2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

Personal experience. Was developing OSI applications in 1989, you could order an X.25 circuit from your PTT and run OSI over that using the ISODE [1] toolkit. The earliest ISP in my country didn't start until 1992. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_Development_Environment

TCP/IP was developed in the 1970s and adopted as the protocol standard for ARPANET (the predecessor to the Internet) in 1983.

Re: Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

#64

Post by yusyusyus »

zik wrote: post #63
rjsw wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal experience. Was developing OSI applications in 1989, you could order an X.25 circuit from your PTT and run OSI over that using the ISODE [1] toolkit. The earliest ISP in my country didn't start until 1992. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_Development_Environment

TCP/IP was developed in the 1970s and adopted as the protocol standard for ARPANET (the predecessor to the Internet) in 1983.

and commercialization wasnt done until the like 1994. OSI as a successor was still proposed when the first BGP4 rfc came out.

before commercialization happened, IP was mostly the realm of government and education.

Re: Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

#65

Post by Hikikomori »

yusyusyus wrote: post #62
Hikikomori wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would call it stretch to say it was widely used by ISPs. Some old ones may still be using integrated IS-IS as their IGP (early OSPF had scaling issues and complicated solutions for that), but that's nothing like widely using the ISO stack. But they might have used IS-IS it to route NSAP in their network at some point in time to manage ATM-era equipment, the ISP I worked still had some ctunnels for that purpose, I dou…

still good reasons to choose IS-IS for greenfield :) hell, they took IS-IS and did TRILL with it for DC (rip TRILL). but yeah, I saw one piece of SONET crap hanging off a ctunnel that spoke CLNP back in maybe 2012 or 2013? haven't seen much of it, but still learned the ctunnel stuff back in '09 because it still could occasionally rear its head.

Worked for an old ISP in 2012 (it started when the state owned telco was privatized). Also had the ctunnel to manage old SONET crap, still had modem pools running, racks full of purple Sun machines still running, vax, hpux, as400, etc. Even the old smsc that was 5 racks of dec servers was still there, was never removed as they didn't need the space because modern equipment was using all the available power anyway (was also in a mountain so a bit of a hassle to remove).

Re: Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

#66

Post by Hikikomori »

p_l wrote: post #52
Hikikomori wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still widely used, among old ISPs because why switch when it's just as good or better than the alternative and your engineers know it best. But it's not the whole stack as implied in the first reply. It was popular primarily because OSPF didn't scale well with hundreds to thousands of routers with the minimal CPU power even large core routers had.

Scalability was one part. Later the fact that you didn't need separate routing setup for v6 also was part of it. But for a telco, the fact that you didn't have to setup IP connectivity in order for routers to see each other, was also a crucial ability.

OSPF has supported unnumbered links for a long time, don't need IP on the link with point to point and multicast.

Re: Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

#67

Post by londons_explore »

addaon wrote: post #43
londons_explore wrote: post #36

I wish layer 2 and layer 3 were 'refactored' to force all links to be point to point, which they effectively are in the modern world. When was the last time you saw ethernet frame collisions because you used a hub not a switch? We'd get rid of the idea of a broadcast domain. We'd get rid of Mac address and ARP. Switches and routers would become the same device. We'd just use ip addresses for routing, and the 'next ho…

> When was the last time you saw ethernet frame collisions because you used a hub not a switch? 10base-T1S is just beginning to ramp up in the automotive industry, which modifies the super-successful 100base-T1 to be cheaper by (a) allowing cheaper PHYs; (b) allowing cheaper endpoints due to the lower data rate to handle; (c) allowing lower-spec single twisted pair wiring; and ... (d) allowing multi-drop. This is int…

> 10base-T1S

I think that standard is a huge mistake... 10Mbits isn't enough for a modern vehicle (no cameras, radars, screens etc). Many sensors alone can push megabits, and in the modern world engineers want to send their data json formatted not with bitfields.

Instead they should have used an cdma-like design with the physical being a 2 cent microcontroller for things like bulbs and micro switches. Then, for things like cameras which require more megabits use a 30 cent microcontroller with a higher chip rate, all transmitting in the same bus and using code division to avoid needing to worry about scheduling.

Re: Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

#68

Post by thaumasiotes »

ninkendo wrote: post #46
londons_explore wrote: post #36

I wish layer 2 and layer 3 were 'refactored' to force all links to be point to point, which they effectively are in the modern world. When was the last time you saw ethernet frame collisions because you used a hub not a switch? We'd get rid of the idea of a broadcast domain. We'd get rid of Mac address and ARP. Switches and routers would become the same device. We'd just use ip addresses for routing, and the 'next ho…

A really interesting article covering this: “The world in which IPv6 was a good design” https://apenwarr.ca/log/20170810 It talks about how when IPv6 was being designed, they wanted to do exactly that: drop most of the layer 2 stuff, abandon the idea of a bus network, make everything point-to-point, all switches would be L3 routers, etc. Search for “What if instead the world worked like this?” for the relevant part.…

> Would my router get a /64, then delegate a /68 to the next “router” (ie. The physical thing I currently call a switch)

This is another weird thing about networking. As far as I've been able to learn, a "router" is a device with two ports that handles transmission of data between those ports, whereas a "switch" is a device with more than two ports that handles transmission of data between those ports.

But nobody would ever care about that distinction.

Re: Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

#69

Post by lukeh »

tristor wrote: post #15
layer8 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X.500 is widely used in the form of LDAP and Active Directory, however.

Active Directory is not based on X.500 and LDAP was directly created as an alternative to the DAP standard that is part of X.500. While X.500 is a precursor to both of these things, and influenced both of these things, and both of these things interoperated with X.500, they are not X.500. X.500 is for all intents and purposes pretty much dead in 2024, although I did deploy an X.500 based directory service in 2012 and…

Ironically there's probably more X.500 remnants in Active Directory than in the UMich-derived LDAP servers, thanks to its Exchange 5.5 legacy.

Re: Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?

#70

Post by jpm_sd »

addaon wrote: post #43
londons_explore wrote: post #36

I wish layer 2 and layer 3 were 'refactored' to force all links to be point to point, which they effectively are in the modern world. When was the last time you saw ethernet frame collisions because you used a hub not a switch? We'd get rid of the idea of a broadcast domain. We'd get rid of Mac address and ARP. Switches and routers would become the same device. We'd just use ip addresses for routing, and the 'next ho…

> When was the last time you saw ethernet frame collisions because you used a hub not a switch? 10base-T1S is just beginning to ramp up in the automotive industry, which modifies the super-successful 100base-T1 to be cheaper by (a) allowing cheaper PHYs; (b) allowing cheaper endpoints due to the lower data rate to handle; (c) allowing lower-spec single twisted pair wiring; and ... (d) allowing multi-drop. This is int…

I think this is a terrible idea. Daisy chain multi drop is so last century. Switched point to point networks are so much better!
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