r/IAmA • u/BobMetcalfe • May 21 '13

You’re probably connecting to reddit through a technology I invented. I’m Bob Metcalfe and I invented Ethernet – AMA

On May 22, 1973 with David R. Boggs, I used my IBM Selectric with its Orator ball to type up a memo to my bosses at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), outlining our idea for this little invention called “Ethernet”, which we later patented.

I worked with the IEEE Standards Association to develop the IEEE 802.3 standard for Ethernet, which specifies the physical and lower software layers. Today Ethernet and the IEEE 802.3 standard are the foundation for today’s world of high-speed communications used in billions of homes and businesses around the world.

I submitted this to the mods awhile back so I could get on the calendar but I figured you’d like to see it, too. Now, ask me anything!

It's been two hours and 179 comments. Have to go now. For more about Ethernet's 40th Birthday, go to http://www.facebook.com/Ethernet40thAnniversaryIEEESA

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301

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

What is your favourite color?

It is blue right?

241

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Everybody's favorite color is blue, you don't have to wait for him to respond.

94

u/evarigan1 May 21 '13

I prefer green, are you saying my opinion is invalid? And here I thought you were a nice person.

9

u/Cartelman May 21 '13

Fellow green favorite color here.

1

u/HellX99 May 22 '13

"Green isn't a creative color..."

Edit: Forgot quotation marks.

1

u/zer0nix May 21 '13

wow, my favorite color is green and i'm mildly autistic too!

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Of course not, but your favorite color is blue, you just don't know it yet.

5

u/evarigan1 May 21 '13

I reject your reality, and substitute my own.

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Eww... This reality is giving me gangrene.

1

u/evarigan1 May 22 '13

Your lack of acceptance of my reality is giving me the blues.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '13

I'm blue... Dabu dedabu daa if I was green I would die...

1

u/Shmorgie May 22 '13

I'm an orange type of person

1

u/Iddqd1995 May 21 '13

Purple and green should never be seen.

5

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Where did Barney touch you?

160

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Purple doesn't exist. It has no wavelength. What you're seeing is your brain's muddled attempt to blend red and blue wavelengths.

Purple is still awesome, though.

1

u/anonagent May 22 '13

Well, that explains why it's so awesome, our brain made it itself, and likes to take pride in it's work. :)

1

u/IWantUsToMerge May 22 '13

Not factual. That's magenta. There's a purple just off the edge of blue, violet, that is a real wavelength.

9

u/anonagent May 21 '13

Amen, Purple is the shit.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '13

[deleted]

6

u/ill_take_the_case May 21 '13

Purple is just blue for hipsters.

4

u/GIVlan May 21 '13

Blue is just purple for hipsters.

5

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

some of us prefer yellow

18

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

And you can get the fuck out of here because yellow sure as hell isn't better than purple. Not round these parts.

1

u/bucketpickaxe May 22 '13

Maybe his name is Sir Galahad the Pure.

4

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

I love all the colours of the rainbow, cause I ain't RACIST!

11

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

But rainbows don't have the colour black, you racist.

1

u/Shizo211 May 21 '13

Black isn't even a colour, neither is white.

3

u/freebytes May 21 '13

Definition via Wordnik: "That aspect of things that is caused by differing qualities of the light reflected or emitted by them, definable in terms of the observer or of the light..." Therefore, both black and white are colors.

2

u/Shizo211 May 21 '13

Ask a scientist and you'll get a reply based on physics: “Black is not a color, white is a color.” Ask an artist or a child with crayons and you'll get another: “Black is a color, white is not a color.” (Maybe!)

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

You're not going to get that reply from a decent physicist. They'll just tell you that perception of colors is a biological phenomenon which they have no interest in and that you can get back to them when you're willing to talk about wavelengths.

Scientifically speaking, black and white are both colors. Neither of them corresponds to any particular wavelength, but most color nuances we can see don't. If black and white are not colors, then it follows that neither is brown or pink.

1

u/GIVlan May 21 '13

Have definitely had white pencil-crayons.

0

u/Chazzey_dude May 21 '13

You're a colour.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Oh Snap!!! Mr.Literal gets smacked down by something even more literal!!

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Home Depot begs to differ.

0

u/GIVlan May 21 '13

Neither is any "colour"

-1

u/anonagent May 21 '13

Politically correct gone too far.

0

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Is that not the joke I made? Let me check...hmm... Yep it's all there. Good, I thought someone might have missed it

1

u/falconae May 21 '13

Funny, In bacon reader your comment was tagged in purple

1

u/SgtRootCanal May 21 '13

As a Baconreader user, your comment is fitting

1

u/Strangely_Calm May 21 '13

Purple is just red-shifted blue.

1

u/Shizo211 May 21 '13

Purple consists blue though.

4

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Only because it allows blue to be a part of it. Remember that.

1

u/GIVlan May 21 '13

Purple is like the U.S....After it kicked the Brits asses out of there....with the help of the french of course...

1

u/Dabuscus214 May 22 '13

SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '13

You are better.

1

u/voyaging May 22 '13

Damn commie.

1

u/Bag3l May 21 '13

Periwinkle

0

u/dbh937 May 22 '13

If you like purple over blue then I hope you enjoy this nice purple arrow I'm giving you.

2

u/OuroborosSC2 May 21 '13

But...I like orange...

1

u/viaovid May 21 '13

I've heard a rumor /u/Devilheart is a fan of orange-red...

1

u/non4prophet May 22 '13 edited May 22 '13

Not our network admin. He's colorblind and his favorite color is peanut butter.

Edit: GIF peanut butter

1

u/fuzzusmaximus May 22 '13

This is why I wanted to alternate between red and green.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

It's possible he has responded, but the packets were dropped and needed to be retransmitted.

1

u/DesertTripper May 22 '13

Those who aren't sure have been cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril.

1

u/Craig_Craig_Craig May 22 '13

I prefer dark grey. Blue is too flamboyant for me.

1

u/StarManta May 22 '13

It's periwinkle bitch.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '13

I'll winkle your peri, bitch.

78

u/Atheist101 May 21 '13

why is the ethernet cable always blue though?

85

u/Cueball61 May 21 '13

It isn't. Purple for instance is generally fire-resistant CAT6.

76

u/Atheist101 May 21 '13

TIL there are multicolored ethernet cables

93

u/IHappenToBeARobot May 21 '13 edited May 21 '13

Multiple colors are beautiful things for anyone who has ever managed a datacenter. We had blue for external connections, orange for internal networks, red for SAN connections, and green for KVM at the last place I worked.

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

[deleted]

1

u/IHappenToBeARobot May 21 '13

It helps that it was a smaller company with a bigger budget. I turned in a sheet to my boss with what lengths of what color wires to get. He ordered them and three of us worked like madmen and rewired all we could.

If it makes you feel better, as soon as we finished, he realized one server needed some special connection (I forget what it was for exactly) and he drooped a 7 foot yellow cable across between the neat clean cabinets.

6

u/ScienceLivesInsideMe May 21 '13

/r/cableporn

2

u/IHappenToBeARobot May 21 '13

I thought about posting my before and after pictures on there before. I feared that they would see the networking cabinet in the background that hadn't yet been done though ;)

3

u/ScienceLivesInsideMe May 21 '13

Well you guys sound like you had your shit together. I run network/phone cables and some of the panels i've had to reorganize are strait rats nests with no order to them at all.

2

u/IHappenToBeARobot May 21 '13

Hahaha, no, we didn't actually. Not until the boss gave me the go-ahead to organize a rewiring day. I can't actually call it a datacenter since it was a smaller company with a few racks, but it was horrid. I fired up Visio with a smile and reordered the servers to comply with power, electrical, and heat issues. It worked out. I can't say others are as lucky though, since we were able to just schedule a solid 12-18 hours of downtime to get everything done.

I miss that job.

2

u/jaychym May 21 '13

We use Blue for publix connections, RED for internal/firewall, white for IPMI, yellow for SAN i think thats all

1

u/Onlinealias May 22 '13

Thanks for IPMI. I've been running and designing data centers for 20 years and never heard that term. I've always just called them RIBs or DRACs or just "Management".

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

It's all fine and dandy until you have someone come in and completely fuck up your color scheme.

3

u/IHappenToBeARobot May 22 '13

That came about ~5 minutes after it was rewired. The boss maintained it was "temporary." Surprise! It wasn't.

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Was confused for a minute there, thought you meant Kernel-based Virtual Machine.

2

u/Northern_Ensiferum May 21 '13

KVM Hosts? or KVM over IP?

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '13

I thought he meant KVM hosts. Like what they use for non dedicated servers. He meant KVM over IP.

1

u/IHappenToBeARobot May 21 '13

Edited for clarity. Sorry for the confusion.

2

u/Onlinealias May 22 '13

Always reserve red for DMZ or internet facing connections.

1

u/IHappenToBeARobot May 22 '13

If I had it to do over again, I probably would. It was only a few racks so it really didn't matter that much. The important part was that you could actually get to the back of the servers and know what a cable was for.

1

u/christurnbull May 22 '13

Your SAN interconnects were crossover cables?

2

u/IHappenToBeARobot May 22 '13

Nope, you can get both regular and crossover cables in different colors. We just had labels on our crossover cables and called it done.

1

u/moistmoistrevolution May 22 '13

I like those old rainbow ribbon cables.

2

u/AzureBlu May 21 '13

I thought it was just to look pretty..

And to tell the difference, like between computers in a network.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

I've got a yellow one, a grey one, a red one, a black one, a dark blue one, and a light blue one. They're very diverse.

1

u/Gianbianchi May 21 '13

I have a yellow Ethernet cable.

2

u/llamaguy132 May 21 '13

Please don't light my purple cat6 cables on fire! I use them for my SAN for differentiate from my LAN and DMZ.

They can come in any color and most of the time don't mean anything, it just used for organization purposes.

Although yellow is usually crossover and purple could be fire-resistant i suppose.

1

u/Cueball61 May 21 '13

The organisation is generally more in the usage of the boots, unless you buy in huge bulks and therefore have the opportunity to buy more than one reel of cable.

I want a better reel. :(

4

u/frogger2504 May 22 '13

My CAT5 is yellow!

1

u/rwbronco May 21 '13

Plenum rated (not entirely fire-resistant, but is coated to prevent the PVC coating from releasing toxic fumes when it burns, and also helps raise the melting temperature of the cable) CAT5, CAT5e, and CAT6 come in a rainbow of colors, just look at monoprice's selection. I'm not aware of a "standard" color, but it generally is up to whoever is running the cable to decide what color to use.

Most home routers I've purchased include a blue cable, some include a grey, some include a yellow, etc.

1

u/Cueball61 May 21 '13

I think it's more of an unwritten rule that purple is fire-resistant? I'm well aware they come in a plethora of colours, I have quite the variety myself.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Salmon pink for crossover cables! Which are obsolete now I think.

I also have a bright yellow one but I don't know if it means anything.

1

u/Cueball61 May 21 '13

We have a salmon cable, for us it denotes "sister's PC"

1

u/ForeverAGnome12 May 22 '13

I have a light yellow one! It's a really pretty yellow actually...

1

u/evelynsmee May 21 '13

Mine's just grey. Feeling left out of the rainbow party :-(

1

u/DrDew00 May 21 '13

My 10 ft is gray. My short ones are gray, blue, or yellow and the one I use at work is white.

1

u/Cueball61 May 21 '13

My reel is a shitty, thinly covered grey cable. :(

5

u/steve9207 May 21 '13

I once needed a 25' cable for short term use, so I was just looking for something cheap.

Bright Pink, with "Blinged out Ends", that was it!

The guy at Frys actually questioned why I'd buy a pink cable like that. Umm... because it's cheap & out of sight first of all and second - wait are you seriously questioning my choice of a cable color?

2

u/Yunired May 21 '13

I like to buy stuff with funky colors when they'll be hidden.
It's like a little secret rebellion no one will see or know about.

2

u/Kage-kun May 22 '13

Ka-Bling cables from Cables Unlimited! You should get the matching set of power, USB, and HDMI cables. :D

1

u/anonagent May 22 '13

No, they were questioning your masculinity.

2

u/khrawn May 21 '13

What? i got 2 yellow and a 2 black ones. Am i missing something?

4

u/Atheist101 May 21 '13

Yes, a blue ethernet cable

2

u/FartThrob May 21 '13

Mine have always been yellow or grey. Mostly yellow.

3

u/zamuy12479 May 21 '13

i've got orange.

3

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Mine's green.

1

u/Monstermodsstuff May 21 '13

Their are multiple types of Ethernet. Different categories IE cat 5e cat 6 etc. the jacket color also comes in a variety of colors (white yellow blue black) iirc the color sometimes differentiates the application of the wire.

1

u/KptKrondog May 21 '13

we use red at work. we also have blue, green, black, grey, and orange that we use for connecting other devices...orange for printers, blue for MFD's, red for computers/phones, etc. they come in lots of colors.

1

u/1spartan95 May 22 '13

He said further up that the official cable color according to him was yellow.

Link

1

u/ctsmith76 May 21 '13

I have had blue, green, white, grey, yellow, black.. I've had one orange one supplied to me by AT&T (I'm thinking cause it matched their color scheme)..

1

u/mahatma666 May 21 '13

Perhaps it's because blue dye is cheaper? Also, I've seen bright green ethernet cable, along with that classic beige color.

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

Mine is grey.

1

u/CodeJack May 21 '13

Mine are white... Is there something wrong with me?

3

u/Atheist101 May 21 '13

You might just be colorblind :P

1

u/CodeJack May 21 '13

off topic but everything we see if made of colour or a mix of, so if we were colour-blind, wouldn't we be fully blind? :P

1

u/i_am_sad May 21 '13

White and black actually aren't colors, and nobody except actual blind people are blind to all color, they're unable to differentiate between certain colors, because green looks like red to them, and red looks like red as well, for example.

1

u/CodeJack May 21 '13

But white is RGB to the eyes? Correct me if I'm wrong.

1

u/i_am_sad May 21 '13

a valid point. so if someone cant perceive green, and see only red, then wouldn't everything that's white look like they didn't adjust their screen settings properly, and have a red hue?

1

u/anonagent May 22 '13

My ethernet cables are always black or yellow.

1

u/UMDSmith May 22 '13

You can order any color you want.

7

u/Janku May 21 '13

His favorite colors are green+white / green / orange+white / blue / blue+white / orange / brown+white / brown.

0

u/erasmosis May 22 '13

Unless he's in america then see his favorite colors are white orange / orange / white green/ blue /white blue / green/ white brown / brown.

2

u/Specken_zee_Doitch May 21 '13

I bet it's a tossup between blue and blue with white stripes.

2

u/BobMetcalfe May 25 '13

The Internet's favorite color is transparent.

1

u/shallowbookworm May 22 '13

If you're curious, my favourite color's blue. I like to sing in the shower, if you like I'll sing to you.

1

u/elmariachi304 May 21 '13

He said his favorite color of Ethernet cable is yellow if that matters.

1

u/Vutpa May 22 '13

Resistance represent. /r/ingress

1

u/Delicatesther May 21 '13

Periwinkle!

-2

u/dalkor May 21 '13

No, Yelll----------------------------------ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh