this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (8 children)

Man they really glossed over the part where it switched over to twisted pair from coax. It’s like saying pancakes used to be waffles and then not bothering to explain.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Yeah. Very significant thing, coax ethernet was different enough to really be its own thing given how the networks were built.

I tend to split Ethernet into hub-era collision fest ethernet (coax and early twisted pair) and the current twisted pair connected via switches era.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Was always fun when someone would remove the terminator from the end of the coax and the network would go all screwy. For some reason our coax run ended in the demo room and they would randomly remove equipment and just disconnect the coax. Network is down again!!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Was always fun when someone would remove the terminator from the end of the coax and the network would go all screwy. For some reason our coax run ended in the demo room and they would randomly remove equipment and just disconnect the coax. Network is down again!!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Was waiting for this.

We used to have LANs when we were teenagers and EVERY TIME a T-Piece or Terminator would go missing.

Went to my mate's place one day and he's got 15 Terminators in his drawer. Prick was taking them every LAN and screwing the network up every LAN because he thought it was hilarious. Making us dick around wondering why it wasn't working (back then it was a fiddly thing to have everyone working properly) all the time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Just in time for us to bring the old tech back like it's new again - now as 10BASE-T1S!

(This is mostly a joke and the new medium is reasonable.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Just in time for us to bring the old tech back like it's new again - now as 10BASE-T1S!

(This is mostly a joke and the new medium is reasonable.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I also hear microprocessors are still going strong after 50 years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I still remember early lanparties, where you couldn't leave early because you could not just unplug your T connector from the Coax without messing up the line termination!

That was a fun aera.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

That was a very visible but in the grand scheme of things it was just a small change, it still carried almost the same electric signal and the same Manchester code, the real big change was at gigabit ethernet, it's pulse-amplitude modulated since.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Don't forget the thick net cable.

And I hated base2 network, so fiddy to work with and can be unreliable if a terminator was removed by a prankster or if there's a faulty network hardware somewhere. BaseT was the best of both reliable and cheap.

I still remember a trick to remember which is which: hub, switch, and router. A hub is like an intersection with only stop sign. Good for low traffic but high collision risk with high traffic. Switch is like an intersection with traffic light, better for high traffic. And router is like an intersection with police car present to enforce traffic.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Switches are better for low traffic too though because they don't flood and they regenerate the signal. These days I don't know that you could detect a latency difference between a hub and a switch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

In my networking class in high school, we were always told that a hub is just a dumb switch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

interesting analogy... we learned that it was just a computer standing with a megaphone screaming to all other pc's on the same hub... where a switch was like sending a papernote to your classmate during class ;-)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

interesting analogy... we learned that it was just a computer standing with a megaphone screaming to all other pc's on the same hub... where a switch was like sending a papernote to your classmate during class ;-)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

In my networking class in high school, we were always told that a hub is just a dumb switch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

oh yeah, I remember the ole coax networking what was it 10Base2 or something weird? with terminators in each end of the cable and all the machines spamming the same cable... but hey we got to game on a network and it was fun but it was a pita to run and and setup

then we moved on to hubs... still lots of collisions... and THEN the golden age of SWITCHES dawned... that was the times :D

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

oh yeah, I remember the ole coax networking what was it 10Base2 or something weird? with terminators in each end of the cable and all the machines spamming the same cable... but hey we got to game on a network and it was fun but it was a pita to run and and setup

then we moved on to hubs... still lots of collisions... and THEN the golden age of SWITCHES dawned... that was the times :D

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

pancakes used to be waffles

I cook both. The differences elude me. One's got more flour and a bit of vanilla flavor? Or is it just a shape thing? Have I been making waffle shaped pancake crêpes all this time?