The inventor of Ethernet has been named the recipient of the latest A.M. Turing Award – some 50 years after coming up with it.
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) gave the award to Robert Metcalfe for “the invention, standardization, and commercialization” of Ethernet.
The A.M. Turing Award is named in honour of British mathematician Alan Turing, who is widely considered to be the ‘father’ of theoretical computing.
It is sometimes referred to as the ‘Nobel Prize for Computing’ and comes with a $1m prize supported by Google.
The idea for Ethernet emerged in a now infamous memo sent by Metcalfe to his bosses at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1973.
PARC was using internet precursor ARPAnet, but that couldn’t connect the 100 new Alto computers – some of the first personal computers to be developed – and Xerox laser printers located in the building.
Metcalfe proposed a ‘broadcast communication network’ to connect the devices.
The original design used coaxial cable, but the memo spoke of “communication over an ether”, essentially future-proofing the concept for use with future innovations such as optical fibre, radio (Wi-Fi) and even power networks serving as the ‘ether’.
The first Ethernet ran at 2.94 megabits per second
That first iteration of Ethernet ran at 2.94 megabits per second, which was still 10,000 times faster than the terminal networks it would replace.
Metcalfe and his team then developed the 10 Mbps Ethernet, which would become an increasingly popular standard.
Today, speeds have reached 800 gigabytes per second, which is more than 270,000 times faster, with another doubling of speed in the pipeline.
Ethernet has also become the worldwide standard, connecting billions of devices to wired and wireless networks alike.
ACM president Yannis Ioannidis said that it was rare for a technology to scale from its origins to today’s multigigabit-per-second capacity.
The ACM also noted that Metcalfe insists on referring to Wi-Fi by its original name, Wireless Ethernet, “for old time’s sake”.
After leaving Xerox, Metcalfe went on to found 3Com, continuing to commercialise Ethernet and helping to introduce the tech to the likes of Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).
He also came up with Metcalfe’s Law, which states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users.
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