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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.

Information

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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