<div dir="ltr">The other bit of this story that I've heard from Andy is that there was some kind of gentlemen's agreement between the IEEE 802 and ANSI/FDDI committees - to have Ethernet stick to 10Mb and let FDDI do 100Mb. Seems, at least in retrospect, to be incredibly stupid.<div><br></div><div>And then there was HP with 100Base-VG (iirc). Sigh.</div><div><br></div><div>You and Andy understood that faster Ethernet was all that was needed.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 11:17 AM Larry McVoy <<a href="mailto:lm@mcvoy.com">lm@mcvoy.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">I'd like to talk to Robert because I'm willing to bet how 100Mb ethernet<br>
came to be is not well known. Feel free to forward this to him.<br>
<br>
Somewhere in the early middle-ish 90s, I was working for Ken Okin in the<br>
server hardware division, building Sun's first cluster. It was just a<br>
bunch of small servers behind a modified kalpana ethernet switch (the<br>
mods were my version of VLANs, I didn't know VLANs existed at that time).<br>
The Kalpana switch opened my eyes to what ethernet could do and could<br>
evolve to in the future if we made ethernet faster.<br>
<br>
So I wandered over to Sun's networking hardware and asked if they could<br>
build 100Mb ethernet over copper. I was too stupid to realize that they<br>
thought I was asking them to signal at 100Mb the same way they signaled<br>
at 10Mb. Which doesn't work because of crosstalk issues (which I didn't<br>
know about at the time, I'm more software than hardware). So they told<br>
it couldn't be done and I went back to SMCC with my tail between my legs.<br>
<br>
It's worth noting that I was sitting one office away from avb and we had<br>
past history. I got him to redesign some memory interconnect because<br>
I had actual memory latency results from all the current hardware<br>
(everyone's not just Suns) and I had a pretty good idea of all the<br>
roadmaps because the processor architects talked to me because they<br>
loved the micro benchmarks in LMbench because they were tiny and ran<br>
fast on their simulators. The design he had was gonna suck and make<br>
us look bad so he stopped the project and designed a lower latency one.<br>
<br>
That's a long way of saying that avb had some respect for me.<br>
<br>
One day, a company called Crescendo Communications showed up to pitch me<br>
CDDI which was FDDI over copper. That signaled at 100Mb. As soon as I<br>
got it, I asked them to wait, went and told avb he needed to hear this.<br>
Pulled him into the conference room, told them this is Sun employee #1,<br>
can you do the pitch again.<br>
<br>
It's worth noting they did not ask us to sign an NDA.<br>
<br>
We're walking back to our offices and avb sort of grins and says something<br>
like "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I said "yup, 100Mb ethernet,<br>
nobody wants FDDI packets if they could have ethernet packets".<br>
<br>
Here is why it is unlikely that anyone knows about this. Andy did<br>
something very smart, he said this couldn't be a Sun project, it would<br>
die if it were. Sun had done mmap, vnodes, NFS, RPC, etc, and the rest<br>
of the industry was sick and tired of chasing Sun. The whole OSF thing<br>
was basically "everyone but Sun".<br>
<br>
Andy said here is what we're gonna do (I did some but it was mostly him<br>
at this point): we're getting in our cars and we're calling on every<br>
networking company in the value, we're looking for a high up engineer<br>
or their lead architect. And all we're gonna say is "did you know that<br>
you can signal over copper at 100Mb like this? Wouldn't it be nice if<br>
we got 100Mb ethernet?" <br>
<br>
And it worked. It wasn't a Sun project, noone remembered that I had <br>
anything to do with it, Andy kept a very low profile, and I believe we<br>
got 100Mb "ethernet" cards trickling out in about 6 months. In quotes<br>
because it wasn't a standard yet.<br>
<br>
The funny thing is I've done a lot of other stuff that people know about,<br>
but I'm more proud of the fact that I pushed for 100Mb and it actually <br>
happened, that's a far bigger deal than anything else I've done (and I<br>
know, I didn't do 100Mb ethernet but I saw it before anyone else did<br>
and pushed for it and Andy, and to some extent, I made it happen).<br>
<br>
I also did a back of the paper napkin design of the ethernet switch that<br>
Granite built, Andy found me in a bar in San Francisco (or somewhere up<br>
there) and asked me if I could have a perfect ethernet switch what would<br>
it look like. But that's a different story and probably not for here.<br>
<br>
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 10:02:12AM -0700, Tom Lyon wrote:<br>
> FWIW, "VLSI Systems" was Andy Bechtolsheim's company that licensed the<br>
> Stanford Sun designs to many companies. When Sun was started, VLSI Systems<br>
> was rolled into Sun.<br>
> <br>
> Sun's first revenue products were 3Mb Ethernet cards which still said VLSI<br>
> Systems on them.<br>
> BTW, if anyone actually has one of these 3Mb board, Robert Garner would<br>
> love to get his hands on one. He's working on a detailed history of<br>
> Ethernet. Robert's probably not on this list, but I can connect folks to<br>
> him.<br>
> <br>
> On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 2:22???AM r.stricklin <<a href="mailto:bear@typewritten.org" target="_blank">bear@typewritten.org</a>> wrote:<br>
> <br>
> > In terms of unequivocally prized, I???d say the following:<br>
> ><br>
> > * HP 9050<br>
> > * IBM 6152 Academic System<br>
> > * SGI Engineering Sample #3 - multibus CPU & framebuffer - these are early<br>
> > SUN boards from VLSI Systems who, as I understand it, were trying to<br>
> > commercialize the Stanford system separately from Sun. Clear genetic link<br>
> > with the Sun-1 CPU and bwone, but not identical to them. Nor to the 68000<br>
> > CPU that ultimately shipped with the IRIS 1000/1200 terminals.<br>
> > * SGI IRIS 1200<br>
> > * Sun 100U<br>
> > * Sun 150U<br>
> ><br>
> > In terms of wanting to mention because rarely seen, missing critical<br>
> > parts, and selfishly hoping to maybe shake something loose someday:<br>
> ><br>
> > * Ardent Titan - missing its console and primary graphics board<br>
> > * Dupont Pixel Systems MacBlitz - missing all the software, both for the<br>
> > Macintosh host and the Clipper C300 UNIX system itself<br>
> > * IBM 9377 Model 90 - actually not missing anything, but I???d quite like to<br>
> > hear that anything related to IX/370 or AIX/370 survived somewhere<br>
> > * mips RS4230 - The requisite RISC/os v5.01 media did turn up somewhat<br>
> > recently, thanks to everyone involved in that effort. Now I???m just hoping<br>
> > to eventually stumble over a new enough version of RISCwindows that will<br>
> > support the console framebuffer (v4.11 IIRC)<br>
> > * Pixar Image Computer - missing host interface board (SGI, Sun, anything)<br>
> > and pretty much all the software (Chap-C, etc.)<br>
> > * Sritek VersaCard - missing the MC68000 Xenix and PC interface software.<br>
> > * Sun FDDI/DX (VME) - missing the SunOS driver tape<br>
> > * Sun GT - busted, missing much in the way of hope tracking down the<br>
> > fault, never mind repairing<br>
> > * Sun TAAC-1 - missing the software<br>
> ><br>
> > A goodly measure of IBM RT AOS/4.3 software has been recovered and<br>
> > archived in the last couple years. Some of it from my own efforts. There<br>
> > are enough of the 6152-specific pieces that exist in situ to make a usable<br>
> > 6152 system, but they're not complete. It???d be nice to turn up some of the<br>
> > official distribution media for that. There???d have been a QIC tape adding<br>
> > the 6152-specific kernel pieces, maybe a floppy or two with the DOS and/or<br>
> > OS/2 host components (if they weren???t also on the tape).<br>
> ><br>
> ><br>
> > ok<br>
> > bear.<br>
> ><br>
<br>
-- <br>
---<br>
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing <a href="http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat</a><br>
</blockquote></div>