On Apr 5, 2010, at 1:43 52PM, 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.
Yup. 10 years earlier, a 3Com Ethernet card for a Vax cost about $1500, if memory serves. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb