The time taken to accomplish this is, however, unacceptable??”especially
with a large number of devices interconnected; a more efficient variant, Rapid STP
(RSTP), is used to address this problem. As will be discussed in Chapter 2, when
Ethernet moves beyond the LAN, there are an exponentially higher number of customer
endpoints and services; even this approach is frequently insufficient and newer techniques
need to be developed.
Ethernet??”The Beginning
As soon as the power of interconnecting several computers and other ancillary devices
became evident, numerous efforts were undertaken to enable this capability within an
enterprise. One such effort was led by Dr. Robert Metcalfe, whose work at Xerox??™s Palo
Alto Research Center (PARC) over several years culminated in Ethernet. ???Ether???15
in the word Ethernet referred to the single low-loss coaxial cable used in the original
version of Ethernet. Figure 1.4 shows Dr. Metcalfe??™s hand-drawn schematic illustrating
Ethernet.16
At that time (1973), Xerox was looking for a way to efficiently interconnect over
100 Alto computers and also drive their new high-speed laser printers, which were
all physically connected over a shared 1-km coaxial cable (or ???bus???).
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