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Plumbers of the Internet: The Creation and Evolution of the LAN Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Urs Von Burg
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Extract

In 1973 at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC), one of the first local area networking (LAN) technologies was invented: Ethernet. Today, Ethernet is the dominant LAN standard but, as is the case with most other information technologies, Ethernet was neither the only available alternative nor a technology well suited for all networking needs from the outset. In fact, when it was first commercialized in 1980, Ethernet was a relatively expensive, high-end technology, suited for connecting minicomputers or workstations but too expensive for connecting microcomputers or personal computers (PCs), soon to be the largest LAN market.

Type
Dissertation Summaries
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , December 2000 , pp. 705 - 714
Copyright
Copyright © Enterprise and Society 2000

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References

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