Charting the course of today`s most pervasive networking topology

Thirty years have passed since Robert Metcalfe invented Ethernet in a Palo Alto laboratory, and few inventions in recent vintage have done more to change the face of IT. The standard topology for virtually every computer network deployed today, Ethernet has revolutionised communications worldwide.

Chris van Niekerk, country manager of 3Com SA, charts Ethernet`s evolution from shared 10 megabits per second (Mbps) to what soon will be 10-gigabit solutions and nearly 30 million ports.

In every century, inventors give birth to ideas that change our world. In 1672, the French sculptor Sieur Guillaume Cassegrain invented the telescope. In 1765, James Watt invented a steam engine. In 1876, Thomas Edison gave us the light bulb and Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. And in 1973, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), Robert Metcalfe invented Ethernet, the networking topology that revolutionised the communications world.

Used in local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs), across wires and the airwaves, Ethernet, at age 30, is still building up steam.

Omnipresent in government, education, finance, healthcare, retail manufacturing and more, Ethernet today is the standard driving a significant number of applications.

In the US, for example, courts use Ethernet networks to track criminal activity and swiftly administer justice. Physicians exchange networked images of MRIS, x-rays and CT-scans to streamline patient care. University students connect to the Internet and campus resources via wireless Ethernet links, and banks among others use Ethernet networks to make local and long-distance phone calls and access voice and e-mail messages in e-mail inboxes.

As Ethernet dawned in the 1970s, businesses were beginning to use PCs and computer-networking technology was in its infancy.

Companies were forced to rely on manual processes for their interoffice and external communications. Managers hand-wrote or dictated memos then sent them to a typing pool or rudimentary word processing pool.

To distribute the communiqu'e internally was a cumbersome, labour-intensive process. If the correspondence was targeted outside an organisation or between branch offices, business used regular mail or couriers.

Productivity was locked up until PCs could talk to each other. And when employees wanted to share files, they had to copy data onto a disk and walk the disk down the hall to a co-worker or mail it to a different office. The process was, at best, time-consuming and, at worst, expensive and unreliable.

Ethernet was designed to simplify and expand business communications. It is an open, public-domain technology that allows the economical build up of shared-media networks.

For the next decade, several factors contributed to the adoption of Ethernet as the de facto communications solution. In 1979, Metcalfe founded 3Com Corporation to build the first viable Ethernet device: the Ethernet network interface card (NIC).

The NIC became the first device to enable different devices - from mainframes to IBM terminals and PCs - to seamlessly speak to each other. As businesses adopted NICs, they began sharing and printing files for increased productivity and enterprise-wide communication.

3Com understood the advantage of making Ethernet an open standard that would allow computers worldwide to connect with one another.

The company, thus, became the driving force to make Ethernet an open-standards technology, encouraging original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Dell and Compaq to create their products to respond to Ethernet technology.

Standardised as 802.3 by the IEEE in early 1986, Metcalfe`s Ethernet was user-friendly, reliable, scalable, and, most importantly, affordable, which enabled the technology to win over businesses worldwide.

Despite these advantages, companies` use of Ethernet was not instantaneous.

At first, technocrats pushed the solution into business environments. Then as employees discovered that PCs were productive business tools, CFOs began signing more requests for the devices, along with printers.

The PCs were expensive, so companies constantly sought returns on their investments. The advent of Ethernet inspired managers and CFOs to leverage these new devices to affordably increase productivity through file sharing.

Moreover, offices were not built for networking and did not have wall ports or jacks at close proximity to employees` desks. As a result, IT staff were forced to run Ethernet cabling from the computers up behind ceiling panels. If something went wrong within the network, staff had to climb into the ceiling to make diagnoses and repairs.

However, as businesses began to expect to build networks, architects designed offices with that in mind to provide aesthetic and convenient connectivity.

In addition, when Ethernet first emerged, its connectivity speed was less than 10 shared megabits per second (Mbps) -- more than enough speed than what visionaries at the time expected would ever be needed.

But as an increasing number of sophisticated business applications drove the need for speed, Ethernet answered the call and scaled initially to switched 10Mbps, then 100Mbps, and 1 000Mbps. Soon, 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) solution will drive modern-day information sharing from the data centre to the desktop.

Ethernet has not only provided the framework for LANs to seamlessly connect employees within the same company and same building, but the technology has also expanded to connect employees located throughout a metropolitan area via metropolitan area networks (MANs). Moreover, Ethernet addresses the need for always-connected and flexible communications by driving connectivity over wireless networks.

While Ethernet sped communications and drove productivity in the early 1990s through file sharing, the Internet was revolutionising inter- and intra-office communications.

However, the prohibitive cost of dial-up and ISDN connections limited access to the Internet to only select employees. Also, although analogue modems were better than waiting for mail to arrive, they could not handle large files, such as those used by engineers and graphic designers, and did little to facilitate enterprise-wide communications.

To further leverage their investments in costly PCs, companies began to use Ethernet not just for file sharing, but also to connect most, if not all employees to the Internet.

This meant in the mid-1990s, approximately 23 million users in more than 100 countries were using the Internet to expedite and enhance their business practices.

By 1995, according to the Dell`Oro Group, a leading industry analyst, total switched Ethernet revenue worldwide reached $4 210 000 mark with 5 000 ports in use.

Moreover, as employees required more flexible and immediate collaboration options, companies began using Ethernet within the Internet Protocol (IP) to converge voice, video and data.

Likewise, companies sought cost-effective and secure solutions that would open their vital information resources to telecommuters, business partners, and workers on the go.

To accommodate these needs, Ethernet was leveraged to power virtual private networks (VPNs) over the Internet. Using VPN tunnels, telecommuters and mobile employees can now instantly and securely connect with colleagues and information.

Similarly, collaboration outside an organisation`s framework has never been easier. If a supply company wants to share information with its OEM, it can use Ethernet connections to ensure secure access through the VPN.

Companies reaped further cost savings with the advent of voice over IP (VOIP). With VOIP, companies use an Ethernet card and an IP link to bypass local telephone companies and have conversations over the Web with real-time quality. This enables a business to eliminate its phone charges and more easily expand locally, nationally or globally.

With total, 2003 Switched Ethernet revenues estimated by the Dell`Oro Group, to reach $3 051 294 630, nearly 1 000-fold more than what existed in 1995, and 29 874 531 forecasted total Ethernet ports, approximately 6 000 times the ports shipped in 1995, Ethernet is a dominant force in the networked communications universe.

Looking ahead, Ethernet stands on the cusp of a new generation of services connecting computers, phones, and TV sets in enterprises and homes worldwide.

Using Ethernet networks, vendors will raise the bar of such multimedia applications as conferencing, which will support Web chat, presence, instant messaging and more

As the foundation and springboard of these new services, Ethernet will remain the delivery mechanism of unborn visions and inventors` dreams for generations to come. Young and vibrant at 30, Ethernet`s greatest achievements are likely still to come.