In article <4BBBF070.6000403@sprunk.org>, Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> writes
Ah, but what _caused_ Ethernet to become ubiquitous, given the price was initially comparable?
For me, as an SME user, I started using Ethernet when Dlink introduced an ISA card [DE205] which had a 4-port hub built in (actually 5-port if you counted the internal one), at not a great deal more than a normal 10Base-T card. I think it was about $250, when a typical desktop PC was $2500. So all I needed to build my network was one of those, some cable, and add-in Ethernet cards for each other PC I wanted to bring into the LAN. As icing on the cake, they also had a Centronics-port dongle to hook up almost all laptops very easily, and in an emergency you could even use it on a desktop. Price was a major feature, but interoperability and backwards compatibility were the tipping points. -- Roland Perry