Re: what about 48 bits?

[joel jaeggli <joelja () bogus com>]

On 4/6/2010 10:39 PM, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> On 05 Apr 2010 12:43, Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:
> > On Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:29:20 EDT, Jay Nakamura said:
> >
> > > > > I would have attributed the success of Ethernet to price!
> > > > You've got the causality wrong -- it wasn't cheap, way back when.
> > > I remember back in '93~94ish (I think) you could get a off brand 10BT
> > > card for less than $100, as oppose to Token Ring which was $300~400.
> > > I can't remember anything else that was cheaper back then.  If you go
> > > back before that, I don't know.
> > Steve is talking mid-80s pricing, not mid-90s.  By '93 or so, the fact
> > that Ethernet was becoming ubiquitous had already forced the price down.
>
> Ah, but what _caused_ Ethernet to become ubiquitous, given the price was
> initially comparable?

Early standardization.

> The only explanation I can think of is the raft
> of cheap NE2000 knock-offs that hit the market in the late 1980s, which
> gave Ethernet a major price advantage over Token Ring (the chips for
> which all vendors _had_ to buy from IBM at ridiculous cost).

Metcalf didn't make computers, whereas IBM and Datapoint did, protecting 
their captive markets cost both of them quite dearly.