Economist article retracing the history of Ethernet.
Take-aways?
- inspiration comes in odd, random moments
- good ideas are simple
- evolution, not revolution
- Innovator’s Dilemma at Xerox
- fast adoption versus high proft margins and how to work in standards bodies
Masayoshi Son’s Yahoo BB! in Japan is supposedly able to keep its DSL fees low in part due to his gigabit ethernet backbone – an interesting validator to the idea of ethernet underlying all data traffic.