TR wasn’t really the focus of the video, mentioned in passing as a means to get the collective companies variously (in)fighting on the earlier twisted pair Ethernet standards to come together to defeat their mutual bogey-man - aka Token Ring.

I was still actively using TR in the late nineties in Sydney, in a particular certain back offices in Commonwealth Bank where there were still strongholds going back to their vestiges of network control with outsourcing via EDS and historic IBM networking history (aka Type 1 cabling - probably more recognisable today as a the forbear of some shielded Cat 8 nonsense 🤣)

The eventual dominance of Ethernet probably wasn’t clear cut until at least the mid nineties, even then upstarts like ATM and the old FDDI weren’t totally vanquished.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

The eventual dominance of Ethernet probably wasn’t clear cut until at least the mid nineties, even then upstarts like ATM and the old FDDI weren’t totally vanquished.

Agreed. The cost of 48 port enterprise switches started to fall I think then. Type 1 cabling was in use at IBM Hursley I saw on a training visit in around 1998 with the adaptors to RJ45. Also I think Boots tills were all connected via Type 1 token ring connectors under the desk.

25+ years later you find hardly anyone using wired connections in offices, everything has moved fast to WLAN, only the AP's on the ceiling (or hidden in the ceiling) are using any fixed cabling. Even Dell and HP have copied Apple and removed Ethernet ports on modern laptops.

Boots tills used type 1 cabling but it wasn't token ring originally, it was the store loop technology used by 3680 (and later 4680) POS equipment.

I worked on teller PC replacement programme for Westpac (in Aussie) back in the day - late nineties - and were doing precisely that, moving from IBM terminals to windows NT 3.5 branch server and terminals.

As I recall we did the cutover on two separate nights, the first night was removing the Type 1 and putting in Cat 5e cabling to all the teller positions and running the green screen terminals over custom adapters/baluns on the new structured cabling and commissioning the branch server.

On the return evening visit the teams would then install the the new teller terminals, patch them all up to a new branch switch and cutover everything onto the new Windows based branch terminal system.

Yes, what we now call a network switch was originally a multi-port bridge. Back in the day, before my day, a switch was a layer 1 device which physically switched circuits. But with the advent of packet switching, the term 'switch' took on a new meaning.

At high school our network was thin Ethernet, and a couple of bridges between some of the segments. (We also had repeaters). When I went to university everything was 10base-T, which used the now ubiquitous RJ45 connections.

You might be interested in a video about the first commercial Ethernet bridge, which also has a demo of the device working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvqv9QcTcfA.

Edited by andrum99 (Mon 02-Jun-25 12:49:44)

Speaking of OSI layer 1 devices, Ethernet hubs were extremely popular in the early days of 10BaseT. At that point in time they were much cheaper than “proper” Ethernet switches (operating at OSI layer 2).

At some point in time, thinking back, probably from the late nineties and into the early 2000’s the cost advantage of hubs diminished significantly. Probably due to ever decreasing costs of Ethernet chipsets, the massive expansion in network equipment manufacturing and vendors (especially from the far east - read Taiwan and China) and thus good old economies of scale.

Ethernet switching then became dominant (over hubs), not only in medium and large enterprise but also in small offices and homes. The so called SOHO market - basically many folks in this readership.

Edited by Pheasant (Tue 03-Jun-25 06:47:33)

In reply to a post by andrum99:

You might be interested in a video about the first commercial Ethernet bridge, which also has a demo of the device working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvqv9QcTcfA.

Yes good video. If you want it from the horses mouth so to speak, read the linked IEEE Spectrum article by Alan Kirby the co-inventor of the subject matter in the video from The Serial Port.

Edited by Pheasant (Tue 03-Jun-25 06:57:33)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Ethernet switching then became dominant (over hubs), not only in medium and large enterprise but also in small offices and homes. The so called SOHO market - basically many folks in this readership.

Just how I remembered it. Switching was quite rare when the UK started going with domestic broadband (NTL’s cable modem trial in summer 1999) and it wasn’t until 2000 that the first home router was being sold in the states (Linksys BEFSR41) with 4 LAN and 1 WAN, and that was a hub….

Ethernet being automatically part of all desktops / laptops happened during the 2000s, USB appeared faster and then PCMCIA/PC Card slots disappeared as built in Ethernet and USB could do it all for cheaper and more reliable.