Speed matters: how Ethernet went from 3Mbps to 100Gbps… and beyond

Detailed overview of the history of Ethernet over at Ars Technica. All the little anecdotes, like the following, make it a very enjoyable read.

I once saw two telecom company guys hammer on a couple of thick coax cables that went through a wall in order to bend the cables downward. This took them the better part of an hour. Another one told me that he keeps a nice big piece of the stuff in his car: “If the police find a baseball bat in your car they call it a weapon, but a piece of coax works just as well in a fight and the police never give me any trouble.”