During the early 1970s, the Xerox company developed an experimental version of co-axial Ethernet. In September 1980 Xerox published "The Ethernet" in collaboration with Digital and Intel. It outlined methodology, physical topology, media and constraints.
In November 1982 the companies published Version 2.0 to define their continued development of this evolving LAN technology. Ethernet Version 2.0 was partially incompatible with the previous specification. This document covered medium access control and the physical layer.
The IEEE became responsible for ethernet specifications and undertook a reformulation of standardisation development. After the work of the 802 committee was completed, IEEE published standard 802.3 to establish ethernet's position in the OSI model. Ethernet was defined as existing across the datalink and physical layers. 802.3 differs slightly to Ethernet Version 2.0, but the main features were retained and for equipment to conform to 802.3, it had to be interoperable with Version 2.0.
Strictly speaking, 802.3 and ethernet are different, but the terms have become interchangeable with time.
|
|
|
|
| Central Institute of Technology | EIA TIA-568 standard information |
| Cisco IEEE 802.3 | Corporate resource |
| SIGCOMM Research Page | Standards information and other links |
 |
 |
 |
 |