what about 48 bits?

Mon Apr 5 02:16:37 UTC 2010

On Mon, 5 Apr 2010 01:57:41 GMT
msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG (Michael Sokolov) wrote:

> Mark Smith <nanog at 85d5b20a518b8f6864949bd940457dc124746ddc.nosense.org> wrote:
> 
> > Has anybody considered lobbying the IEEE to do a point to point version
> > of Ethernet to gets rid of addressing fields? [...]
> > Actually the minimum 64 byte packet size could probably go too, as that
> > was only there for collision detection.
> 
> And maybe rename it to something else while you are at it?  All those
> people who have hijacked the name "Ethernet" for PtP links (all those
> "Ethernet" UTP media are really PtP at the physical level, unlike real
> coaxial Ethernet) are despicable thieves - now those of us who are still
> using the original coaxial Ethernet in the shared bus mode are left
> without a clear, unique and distinctive name we once had to refer to
> what we use.
> 

Actually the IEEE have never called it "Ethernet", it's all been IEEE
802.3 / XXX{BASE|BROAD}-BLAH.

"Ethernet", assuming version 1 and 2, strictly means thick coax, vampire
taps and AUI connectors running at (half-duplex) 10Mbps. I saw some of
it once.

Regards,
Mark.