Congratulations: Networking expertise is one thing that many individuals take completely with no consideration. Plugging a PC right into a router to connect with an data superhighway is one thing that simply works, so we do not suppose a lot about it. But that wire we plug in is the spine of the entire thing and with out the work of Bob Metcalfe, you would not be studying this text.
The Turing Award is broadly considered essentially the most prestigious in pc science, generally known as the “Nobel Prize of Computing.” It is called after the well-known pc scientist Alan Turing. The Association for Computing Machinery awards it yearly to people who’ve made important contributions to the sector of pc science.
This yr’s winner is Robert Metcalfe, the co-inventor of Ethernet expertise. Metcalfe is an Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas, Austin and now works as a analysis affiliate in Computational Engineering at MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
Ethernet is a networking expertise that has revolutionized the way in which computer systems talk with one another. It permits units to connect with a neighborhood space community and share sources resembling printers and information. Today, Ethernet gear and its protocol are essentially the most broadly used networking expertise on the planet, forming the spine of the Internet.
Metcalfe’s work on Ethernet started within the early Nineteen Seventies when he was a researcher at Xerox PARC. At the time, there was a necessity for a brand new networking expertise that might join the corporate’s rising variety of pc terminals. The downside Metcalfe and his staff confronted was one we frequently take with no consideration—bandwidth.
In early networking, every pc had a devoted communication channel. So connectivity was costly and complicated, significantly because the variety of computer systems in a community grew. Ethernet allowed a number of computer systems to share the identical communication channel, decreasing prices and simplifying community administration.
Initially, the staff deployed the expertise internally inside Xerox. In 1980, Metcalfe commercialized the tech, and different firms quickly started adopting it. Subsequently, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers standardized Ethernet in 1983, ushering within the related world that we all know at this time.
Interestingly, Ethernet’s identify got here from a now-famous memo that Metcalfe penned in 1973. In it, he described a “broadcast communication network,” by which data travels “over the ether” [sky or air], so one would possibly say he envisioned WiFi a long time earlier than its invention. Of course, Ethernet’s introduction led to quite a few communication developments aside from WiFi, together with “legacy telephone twisted pair, optical fiber … and even power networks, to replace the coaxial cable as the ‘ether.'”
Congratulations to Robert Metcalfe for profitable the celebrated Turing Award for his pioneering contributions to pc networking and the event of Ethernet expertise. His revolutionary work revolutionized how computer systems talk and laid the muse for contemporary pc networking.
Image credit score: MIT
