Electronics

[ROMARY]

Who in the heck named 'ethernet'?

All of this time, I couldn't figure out what ethernet was.

I guess it's when you connect the cord into a wall or strip?

Odd name, ethernet..........

[gardenman]

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@ROMARY wrote:

Who in the heck named 'ethernet'?

All of this time, I couldn't figure out what ethernet was.

I guess it's when you connect the cord into a wall or strip?

Odd name, ethernet..........

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That would be Robert Metcalfe, an engineer working for Xerox at their PARC facility way back in 1973. For a while in the 1800s and early 1900s there was believed to be a luminiferous aether that allowed the transmission of electromagnetic waves (light) so he named his data transfer system "ethernet" as an homage to that mythical aether.

Ethernet just refers to a whole family of networks/networking items. An ethernet cable connects our routers and network interface cards (NIC) tucked away inside our computers. All of which are part of the ethernet. Most of us are using local area networks (LAN, our homes covered by wifi) but there are also Municipal Area Networks (MAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN) all of which are also part of the ethernet. Pretty much every part of the equipment and technology used to let our computers talk to one another is part of the ethernet. The cable to connect any two of those components is typically called an ethernet cable which is where most of us encounter the word.