ABSTRACT
Ethernet was developed in the 1970s by Xerox, Intel, and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to enable users at their “workstations,” then a radical concept, to transfer files using a nonproprietary network. In 1983, Ethernet was first standardized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Working Group is still very actively developing extensions and new systems. IEEE 802 is such an unwieldy mouthful, and few people use the formal name anyway, so the network will be referred to in this book as simply Ethernet.
