Re: Ethernet turned out to become the network winner
Ethernet does not scale is largely IBM FUD, trying to persuade people that there were good reasons to prefer their more expensive 4Mb/s system to 10Mb/s Ethernet.
Words like 'deterministic' get tossed around, conveniently ignoring the fact that it is only achievable on a LAN with a BER of 0. As soon as you accept the possibility of random noise corrupting a bit, determinism goes out the window.
Some theoretical studies of ALOHA have the performance tending to 1/e, which at 37% is remarkably convenient for token-pushers. However, ALOHA isn't CSMA/CD.
It's true to some extent that in ridiculously worst-case scenarios e.g. 1000s of nodes on the same collision domain, all constantly sending minimum size packets Ethernet starts to break down.
(Digression: For Gigabit Ethernet 802.3 specified a somewhat complex half-duplex mode because the idea of publishing an Ethernet standard without it was too contentious). When (I think) precisely nobody developed a half-duplex 'repeater' later standards dropped it entirely)
So what I am going to do is what I usually do at this point, which is to refer you to the classic WRL paper - Measured Capacity of an Ethernet: Myths and Reality (Boggs et al). RIP David.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
