On Apr 5, 2010, at 1:43 52PM, valdis.kletni...@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