TWISTED: The dramatic history of twisted-pair Ethernet

[@ssl3546]

Man you are doing such a service to mankind to getting these interviews on the record. Incredible work.

[@dominick253]

That's weird. The interviews are my least favorite part. To each their own I suppose.

[@I_Am_Your_Problem]

@ssl3546 You've never read a book...

[@QuantumThiccc]

​@dominick253 I'm sure it wasn't his favorite either but preservation of information and history is very important making this cool regardless of the quality

[@bryanjk]

Yup. Thanks for preserving their experiences and how it happened! We can always learn from history, habits and basically how it was done! It does make me sad some people don’t see that aspect. We are a bunch of apes playing with stuff learning from each other. The more we can do that the better. And you never know what random ass data (aka this interview) you may need in the future for some reason. but on a human level, it’s just lovely to hear the stories. it’s weird thinking Ethernet via rj45 may have never existed but in an alternate universe… and that’s why the interviews are great and apart of history /rant❤

[@BartlettTFD]

@@QuantumThiccc Personally, I think all these people that were kind enough to be interviewed, deserve our gratitude and appreciation not only for their determination to push for UTP but their understanding that coaxial cable was the wrong solution‼️

[@xenadu02]

Anyone who misses the coax stuff never worked with a large network. Holy crap was it a pain tracking down where someone kicked the cable or smashed their computer up against something creating a break. And the broadcast storms... one file transfer or large print job would bring everything to a crawl. We started stuffing switches into the attic to create multiple coax segments to reduce contention and narrow the field when trying to find a break. Never was I happier the day we tossed the coax in the garbage can and replaced it all with UTP. Those cables and connectors would suffer way more damage without breaking and the penalty was suffered by the offender. Switches came later but even cheap 8 port hubs of the day often had a switch on their uplink port.

[@KarlBaron]

The computer lab in our middle school used coax ethernet. It was a favorite pastime to troll the teacher by just slightly loosening the plug on the back of a computer, taking down the whole network. I couldn't imagine the headache being responsible keeping a network like that up!

[@Mike80528]

How about the good old thick coax with vampire taps? That was just going away when I got into the industry. I think Arcnet was the new thing with Token ring still being the primary large network topology/. Ethernet was just gaining traction.

[@bobroberts2371]

Circa 2020 I took a throwaway job at an old factory turned warehouse. The factory still had thin coax in use until it closed in 2000.

[@mgmacius]

But you have to admit that connectors were way easier and more fun to do. Shame it was the only good thing about coax

[@markusfritze]

100% Agreed. We only found a sporadic network issue, which existed from day 1 onwards when we moved offices and completely dismantled the old space…

[@NemesisTWarlock]

Shoutout to Pat, The Queen of Ethernet :)

[@markrix]

You know? I was thinking the same

It should be more known that a lady is "the mother of Ethernet 10BASE-T" and not a man

[@deadreaver666]

"Hold my beer while I go get Wi-Fi"..... Needs to be a merch item.

[@forbiddenera]

Right? Legend thing for a legend to say 😂

[@autohmae]

WiFi, which is also Ethernet

[@soundra7134]

I almost had to get a new keyboard after losing my sip of coffee ...

[@ericnewton5720]

It’s lacking the context of “can’t get cheaper than zero cost (ie exisiting) wiring”. You can in fact get cheaper than zero cost wiring by not having to run wires at all.

[@autohmae]

@@ericnewton5720 the funny thing about wireless, it's 90% wires and only the last bit is wireles

[@L-Tek]

The revelation that the RJ45 connector never actually existed as a standard and we've been calling it that because of the similar standard RJ45s completely blew me out of the water. It's basically the mandela effect in IT. Had to look that up to find out that the actual connector that we've been miscalling RJ45 all the time is the 8P8C.

[@phill6859]

You've probably been misusing RS232 as well

[@forbiddenera]

I somehow knew this for a very long time. But I also started on thinnet. And yeah, lots of people call any TTL RS232

[@FindecanorNotGmail]

@@phill6859 You mean the moniker "DB-9" (D-subminiature, B-size, 9-pin), to mean "DE-9" (D-subminiature, *E* -sized, 9-pin)?

[@thecatofnineswords]

@@forbiddenera The other two common serial standards - RS485 and RS422 - grumble at being ignored. They're better known in industrial processing, not so much in IT.

[@steveurbach3093]

@@forbiddenera RS232 was + and - 12V (ran on short runs, as low as 3V) swing. It also had all the handshake status lines for Modems although there were many that just did 3 wires (T, R, G) and forgot that some devices EXPECTED RTS, CTS, DSR.

[@codedGiraffe]

I'm so glad this computing history is documented with the original creators in their own words

[@cromulence]

Thank you for shining a light on the unspoken heroes of so many important technologies. It’s lovely. I’m so appreciative of these pioneers!

[@Xsiondu]

This video. This interview matters. Thank you for saving it history

[@themaritimegirl]

I never knew UTP Ethernet was designed to take advantage of existing 1A2 phone cabling; that makes so much sense!

[@ghammer9773]

Someone needs to do a full video on the modular connector standards because it is has some close relations to this story.

[@grabasandwich]

​@@ghammer9773 With how long KZbin has been around, there must be at least one video on the subject? I tried a quick search and didn't see one geared towards the average person, but I didn't spend long.

[@projectartichoke]

@@ghammer9773 That would be so cool!

[@BobbieBees]

RJ-45s are derived from RJ-11s which are derived from RJ-10s. This explains why the pinout for the wiring is the way it is on ethernet. The RJ-10 was the a 4 pin - 4 conductor connector for telephones. Pins 2 & 3 were Line 1 Tip and Ring, Pins 1 & 4 were Line 2 Tip and Ring. The RJ-11 superseded the RJ-10, but it kept the Line 1 and Line 2 wires in the same place in the centre of the connector with an extra pair on the 1 and 6 pins. RJ-45 now had 8 pins. But it kept telephone lines 1 & 2 in the same place in the centre of the connector but added new twisted pairs on pins 1 & 2 and 7 & 8. The original idea was for the telephone to use the telephone portion of the connector and the network to use the 1-2 & 7-8 pairs. However, by the 2000's, the dropping cost of ethernet cable and the prevalence of digital PBX and VOIP meant that networking ended up taking over the entire connector.

[@forbiddenera]

I thought this was obvious. But I started with thinnet coax

[@pseudonym3690]

I love the fact that the standard has developed to such speeds that the regular user will not be able to max it out for years to come, but also for allowing the use of decades old hardware that can still be connected with it.

[@EJD339]

Didn’t really think about it like that but that’s really impressive.

[@killpidone]

Don't think it'll be years, I didn't think I'd ever have a terabyte of data and here we are.

[@AndrejPodzimek]

This is because since roughly the 1 Gb/s era, ethernet is no longer physically simulated. The cable is merely a symbol that tells the Matrix to pass datagrams between two locations. This is a win-win situation for both the Matrix itself and the Matrix API endpoint vendors inside the simulated environment.

[@UncleKennybobs]

@@AndrejPodzimek Get professional help.

[@ThylineTheGay]

​@@UncleKennybobs I would assume it's a joke

[@LKComputes]

now this is is a christmas present

[@captainsunshine918]

I love how your vidoes include interviews with the pioneers of old tech... Fantastic job, great video!

[@EricKolotyluk]

As someone who actively lived through this era, this ia a fantastic retrospective. Thanks.

[@davidblair8843]

It’s videos like this that make me wish there was something stronger than a “thumbs up” on KZbin. This is fantastic, a masterpiece. I’m so glad you tracked down the people responsible to preserve their story. You’re really doing a great thing for the history of computer networking. Keep up the good work! 😊

[@DakPeoples]

This is fantastic that you got all of the old players for this master class history lesson. Thank you!!!

[@guspaz]

It's an uncommon bit of ongoing backwards compatibility that you can take any 34-year-old 10BaseT device and plug it into any computer with an ethernet port today, and it will *just work*. I don't think any other external connector for digital communication on your computer can make that claim, even USB doesn't go back that far.

[@webmonkey44]

Some switches are removing compatibility with 10 now…

[@kreuner11]

USB doesn't go that far? I have keyboard which still only use 1.1

[@StrawberryKitten]

@@kreuner11 Devices such as keyboards and mice don't need more than USB 1. And USB was released in 1996 - so not 34 years ago. ;)

[@kreuner11]

@StrawberryKitten still you can plug in the first ever USB mouse and it would work

[@ABaumstumpf]

PS/2 - that would work. Sadly, for some really retarded reasons, it is nearly killed in normal non-professional hardware.

[@clintk4691]

I have no idea what I'll ever do with this knowledge. Just a humble highschool drop out trucker but damn this is interesting!

[@JasonB808]

AI is the talk of the tech world right now but AI will not work without the modern version of UTP Ethernet or Ethernet over fiber connecting AI locally in data centers to the internet. All you need is a cert like CCNA to get started. Get an entry level Field Tech job where you can install, upgrade, or help troubleshoot network equipment with Network Engineers on call to guide you on more advanced issues. Then after a couple of year’s experience you can upgrade to an CCNP if you want and become a Network Engineer who designs and maintains the network infrastructure and guides field techs. One thing that AI robots can never do is physically install network equipment. If a switch fails, a human has to replace it. Network Engineers make a lot of money but they are also very busy and can work long hours at times. Thats why I never became one. I just do System Admin work and I am fine with it as I have a normal 8 hour work day most days.

[@Zachattackisrad]

Yeah I'm not a tech guy. I think it's interesting to hear about this stuff! I think the evolution of technology and how to them it was "just work" but now it's vital history

[@finntjomstol9364]

This is one of the coolest videos I have watched in my 10+ years on KZbin and it’s 2hrs old and 42 comments. Great work Mr Bing.

[@nufosmatic]

0:18 - Working for a computer factory in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1982, I was on a team to wire the factory. Networks were only in the offices and the labs, and we needed a network in the factory to (1) test the networking components of the products being shipped and (2) make a production machine available to engineers while they were sitting in their office or lab. We had to install the big orange cable between the administration building and the factory - 1500' at $10/ft for the orange cable... and then, of course, all of the transceivers... and every time you put in a transceiver you ran the risk of destroying the cable...

[@el3print]

During those times, 'our' network was building BBS-es internally with dial-up modems to the central dataserver over excisting telephone-cabling. That used one (+ground) or 2 wires only.... Many places only had one telephone-connection in a room so it was either data-network over BBS or using a telephone. The solution was a shared telephone-wire with later a wireless phone.

[@StoopidSmith323]

I know very little about computers, but as an electrician i spend lots of time running CAT6 and terminating it/putting ends on. I always wondered about the twisted pairs and what the hell they were twisted for. I didnt understand half of it but enjoyed getting some insight into why im doing what im doing. Man do my fingers hurt after untwisting all the pairs when im doing office buildings with 400 wires.

[@James_Knott]

Hopefully you're an electrician that knows how to properly run Ethernet cable. That is no sharp bends, wire staples, etc..

[@AlGoYoSu]

I've put on thousands of RJ-45 connectors and could terminate both ends in under a minute. Using EZ RJ-45 connectors and crimpers help a lot. Score the outer sheathing 1.5" from the top to expose the twisted pairs (you'll figure out if you need more or less with practice). Use a pocket flathead screwdriver (smaller the better) to seperate your twisted pairs putting them in the order you're going for. You will notice the top 1/4" will be wavy, use your snips to cut this off and the rest of your wires are perfectly straight. Cut to length and add your connector. The EZ style connectors pass through so extra long doesn't matter if your wires are too long and the crimpers have a blade to cut the wires when terminating. Save your fingers and untwist with a tool.

[@utahnl]

Another interesting bit of information, the pairs are actually twisted at different rates to reduce crosstalk.

[@garbo8962]

Spent 50 enjoyable years as an electrician. Ran miles of computer cables but never terminated them. Best was back in the 1980's when we had to run a ton of cable for a new computer system. Corporate flew in a guy from a thousand miles away several times just to make connections. One cable was over a1,000 hard run thru maybe 12 walls. Guy said it could not be spliced. After he got fired new guy cut that run to connect a second computer.

[@ashyasharris1]

I'm a middle-aged apprentice electrician learning this stuff from the ground up. We're doing a huge new computing and info science building for a major university -- 3000+ CAT6 data ends into offices and labs (not to mention controls for building systems automation) going back to closets. I'm still rather slow at around 5-7 mins per end, mostly female ends on my part. I'm going to watch this whole series because while I was working today I started to think about how little I really understand how this stuff works. I'm just learning the beginnings of AC theory. My foreman (a badass smart woman) has like 35 years of experience with it. I'm just starting my second year. I just want to know what's going on and how to do it better. I was so happy to find this channel.

[@retropusher]

As a "man of a certain age", with a keen interest in computers since very early childhood - I've heard, seen, read and experienced a quite a lot, and it's is becoming more and more rare that I'm getting really excited about anything. But this video... It is literally one of the most interesting and captivating I've have seen in a long while. I have no doubt it is one of the very best I've seen this year, and perhaps in the top 10 of all time. A big thanks to everyone involved in making this video!

[@bobblum5973]

I lived and worked through that time period at a major defense contractor. I remember signing a non-disclosure agreement on Synoptics LattisNet UTP implementation, which was _not_ 10-BaseT, the standard didn't exist quite yet. We also evaluated the 3Com _PairTamer,_ an unpowered gray box the size of a standard electrical outlet cover, that allowed converting a ThinNet 50-ohm coax into a single twisted pair. It even included an RJ-11 jack to provide a telephone port over a second pair. A second PairTamer at the othe end would convert it back to a BNC coax connector and permit daisy chaining to multiple computers. UPDATE: I wrote the above early in the video, was amused to see the same details come out once I redumed watching. 🙂

[@RadioChief52]

I was working in the LAN department at Martin-Marietta in the late '80's when 10baseT was introduced. It was a game changer when you considered the miles of thicknet and thinnet we had running all over the place. We even pioneered a very early version of Ethernet over cable television supplied by Ungermann-Bass that could reach between far flung buildings on the campus.

[@Chris_at_Home]

I worked at a copper and gold mine in Indonesia turning up a network in 1994. The network was spread out over 80 miles. When I left there were 1,100 terminals and 1,000 PCs hooked to this network. Cicsco even came over to test some new products because of the size of the network.

[@johnnolan2306]

I'd like to personally thank all those people you highlighted in this video for their persistence and success in arguing the current network technology through the standards process and, like a group of St. Georges (and maybe we could canonize Pat Thayler too, then we could then celebrate St Patrick's Day with green beer and St Patricia's Day with massive data transfers) by slaying the monopolistic dragons in their caves. As someone who struggled economically all his life, I built computers from cast off components bought from places like Weird Stuff Warehouse in Santa Clara, CA where I grew up. When the installed bases of 10 base-2 swapped out their old NICs for 10Base-T, I was able to afford those cards, cable, connectors and terminators so I networked several '386 computers with 10Base-2 so I could play DOOM with my sons. Now, my network is 1GBase-T with everything from workstations to servers (and the internet, lest we forget that) that enables us to work together on diverse projects at home and share our imaginations with each other and with other people all over the planet. Your work has had an impact in our lives.😊

[@blu3_enjoy]

Thanks for sharing great message

[@dataolle]

So cool you are interviewing engineers that created the actual stuff. Love this!

[@jerryfaircloth]

Wow that brought back a lot of memories. Back in the day and before the 10Base-T standard I had installed quite a bit of the Synoptics Lattisnet gear before it was compliant. It saved a ton of issues wiring large call centers and really worked well. One thing I remember was that the original Lattisnet used adaptive equalization on the receiver which in my real world testing actually worked better than 10Base-T. I am not sure about this but It may have been patented by Synoptics and thus the stardard had to be different. I don't think I saved any Synoptics gear for nostalgia purposes but I do still have a couple of the first generation Cisco routers I bought and they still booted up last time I checked. What a leap it was when we could route instead of bridge. And then switching happened and boom here we are today. I think you are doing a great service preserving this information for the younger folks to see why and how we got here.

[@UnknownProductions0]

ethernet, its history, flexibility and technology as a whole has completely changed my life in more ways than just playing video games. its got me into learning how to do all forms of network engineering, security, access control, phones etc i love it.

[@alexevansuk]

The fact that switches in the early 00's still had coax support and many modern twisted pair switches are still backwards compatible shows how much this changed the the world of networking and growth. Lovely video.

[@LaLaLand.Germany]

Love the seniors humor! I bet that was the last that guy expected: someone to say "Yeah, that was me, now what?" But I blaimed them nubbins, too. Because I broke so many of them. Them farty nubbins on cheap plugs- the softeners went and the plastic broke. Always on closure time… Good video, I once found an old ehernet thing on the curb. It was so old, I barely figured it out. But over the serial port it gave a "Hellorld", so I gave it to a SETI fellow. He had so many old rigs joined together- he got his winter´s warmth from them. I bet he still runs that piece of gear… Happy New Year!

[@AristophMarloque]

This video is such a trip! I've been installing data cabling for several years. It's a small business, just the owner and myself. But he's been doing this for almost 50 years. And he's got clients that have been with him for nearly that long, too. The shot of the rat's nest of wires at 4:54 is downright familiar to me (and, in fact, looks downright organized compared to many I've seen). Just earlier this year we had a new client who was gutting and renovating and old office space, so before we could run any new cables we had to pull out everything that was already in there. The look on my boss' face when we opened up the first ceiling tile and he saw a big old 10Base5 box was priceless! A mixture of nostalgia as he remembered how cool the stuff was, and dread as he remember how much of a pain in the ass those thick cables were to work with! XD He spent the whole job reminiscing about starting out in the industry dealing with Thicknet, watching each generational leap as tech developed, remembering all the times he worked his butt off to install a network only to be back a few years later ripping it out and installing an entirely new system...I love getting to pick his brain on the job. I know that man's forgotten more than I'll ever learn about this business.

[@darksam1212]

I've been craving this exact video, thanks.

[@benhughes6347]

This channel definitely gives perspective on the absolute titans whose shoulders we stand on today. Amazing video

[@kmonyt]

Thanks for the video! I was a Cisco Network Engineer and ended up working for a Value Added Reseller, as we were called. Sold and supported all manner of ethernet cabling, AUI transceivers, media converters, repeaters, hubs, and then later switches. This was mid to late 1990s, and we were making a staggering $1.5 billion dollars a year. While my salary, was ummm, a tiny tiny fraction --- I managed to buy a house, take international vacations a couple times per year, get married. It was really a crazy time in the industry. So much fun being a part of it!

[@Chris_at_Home]

I worked at a job at a mine in Indonesia in 1994 and we had many racks of Cisco equipment as this network had about 1,100 terminals and 1,000 PCs hooked to it. I have some pictures of this.

[@Nolano386]

Congrats on catching fire with this video! Most recent and now most watched, you're going places. This was great context I have wondered about for a long time.

[@cornishman99]

Truly great video. Like many engineers, I lived and worked through this time - not appreciating where these new technologies came from. The IEEE is a model for collaboration among competitors.

[@steveurbach3093]

Those were the days, living on the bleeding edge of new tech (I never knew until recently, how early I was installing this kind of stuff). I had to explain AUI cables (I built over 300 for our networks).

[@ynotw57]

Wonderfully informative. I never knew the predecessors of our current connectivity, nor the people behind them. Well done, and thank you for sharing the stories which helped build our digital world.

[@WixTheQwix]

First off Great Video! One thing to add is that ethernet did not have "switches" like we have today. They only had 10mb Hubs. Which broadcast all the traffic simultaneously to all ports.... So 10mbit was shared across all the ports. It wasn't till 1990 they started making ethernet "switches" that would route traffic based on MAC of the connected devices. Only broadcast traffic would be broadcast to all ports at same time. Hence the issue of broadcast storms etc with switches when they would operate like a hub for anything on same layer 2 that is set to .255 address broadcast destination.

[@WixTheQwix]

And even though a switch was invented in 1990. It was still very expensive for many years. They infact still had and sold Hubs even in early ~2000 when they were phased out for more intelligent switches.

[@CarlosOsuna1970]

The most inspiring video I’ve seen of something extremely technical and niche that became a part of our daily lives. Steve Jobs NeXT cube was announced only with coaxial, but as soon as the announced the NeXT station, all motherboards integrated both ports. The fact that the 5” x 5” Mac mini whose grandfather (Silver Power Macintosh G3) grandfather was the NeXT Cube has an Ethernet port on the back keeps us grounded on this history.

[@dgriff-can]

Great video! Only had one experience with coax networking between my roommate’s PC and mine for the purpose of gaming. Everything after was twisted pair and never looked back. Thanks to everyone who worked on developing this amazing technology!

[@czperiod2576]

Nicely done! I ran Starlan 1mbps at Westinghouse in 1987-1988 or so, we also bought a Synoptics LattisNet rack mounted system for a few special computers with 10mbps needs (Novell servers connecting to each other, the backup system, my desktop of course). All of this was running on traditional telephone cables in a relatively new building. I remember the flat satin cables gave problems with LattisNet, but worked fine with StarLan. Likewise once 10BaseT came out Starlan released an updated "timing module" that you could slide into the rack to turn your existing blades into the 10BaseT standard. Good times, good times. Compared to the pain in the tail that was thinwire (and the very weird version that allowed you to plug and unplug individual stations which was terrible) LattisNet and Starlan were *GREAT*..... Thanks for this video.

[@peterslow6371]

Wow man. This is really an excellent documentary. Thanks for what you’re doing. I can’t say it enough.

[@peterslow6371]

…it would be really fun to see more Ethernet signaling on the oscilloscope 🥹

[@drbadzer]

A very very well made video that taught me more about networking than the very own networking course in my university. Especially with the expert interviews. Well done 👏🏽

[@Skiller71Studios]

Loving this format - please don't stop

[@letterspace1letterspace266]

Great story! So many memories from seeing network gear from the early 90s

[@fredfred2363]

Yes, we often read about the Ethernet development, but hearing it from the people that actually did it is priceless. Great interviews. 👍🏻🇬🇧

[@MOOBBreezy]

Great video (and great channel!) Funnily enough, I just encountered 25 pair UTP cable at an old client site used for connecting relays to our PLC I/O. 50 individual wires in one cable is very useful for control hundreds of doors!

[@brucewilliams6292]

Thank you for getting this history down in video. Well done!

[@bassman5066]

This is amazing man, I thank you and the guests on this video for providing the next generation of computer nerds the history we never knew we needed. So many things make sense...

[@alanjrobertson]

Nice, I remember setting up a 10base2 network in my uni flat in the late 90s as it was the cheapest route, then moved to 100baseT in early 2000s - both made for some great multiplayer LAN gaming 😉

[@tomhekker]

Wow, thanks for this video. Never knew how we got on UTP cabling for Ethernet and it’s a super interesting story!

[@sinisterpisces]

I absolutely *love* these documentaries; I certainly wasn't expecting a sequel to the ThickNet video. I'm winding down after everyone's gone away on Christmas Day … night, and this is the vibe I needed. It's amazing to see these interviews. I know those aren't easy to schedule or conduct. You and your interview subjects have serious dedication to get these done. The audio editing on this was spot on. The quiet, punctuated by the piercing noises when you hung up the notes with people's names on them gave a retro noir detective vibe. :) I'm going to have to go read up on "true" keyed RJ-45 now. :P I wonder what the people working so hard to lower costs for business deployments in the 1980s would think if they got brought forward into the future and saw, e.g., the absolutely ridiculous pile of CAT6 I've got running around the rack in my home office … and the rest of my home office. :P I do feel like I was born at an odd time. When I was in elementary school, small businesses where I'd go with my dad were still bringing in consultants to figure out if they could get away with a hub or had to move up to a much more expensive switch. By the time I was in high school and starting college, we were getting 802.11b Linksys wifi routers and APs, and by the time I was in college everything was switches and hubs were something you kept around That Old Thing in the Closet. It all feels like it happened so fast. They should have gotten David Bowie for the StarLan marketing. Things might have gone differently, then. :P

[@potatoonastick2239]

What a nerds we are. You for making this, me for watching it all the way through. Thanks.

[@BartlettTFD]

Extremely familiar with 25 twisted pair PBX cable. Known as CAT 3 cable. Pairs had a very loose twist which unfortunately could cause crosstalk between the talk pairs. It was not uncommon to be able to hear a conversation at low level while on hold from an adjacent line. As the twist became tighter with CAT 5, then CAT 6, etc, crosstalk decreased while bit rate increased. The history and struggles of this technology is totally fascinating👍👍

[@FOHGeek]

I once terminated a 30-meter long CAT6 STP cable with XLR connectors and used it to carry 4 tracks of balanced analog audio from a mixing console to another. Neither noticeable crosstalk nor background noise can be heard.

[@rileybaker8294]

@@FOHGeekadam neely just put out a video about his band’s new iem rig and they’re using balanced audio over cat5: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kJ2cqGd7eq2jbtk

[@utidjian]

Cool subject for nerds like me. I really appreciate the efforts you have made to bring this history together in an accessible format. Thank you.

[@pascalnelson9034]

Great history. I watched a lot of this happening from the inside back in the day. How far we have come. Thank you for documenting it in such an accessible way. Also, it was wonderful to hear so much from Pat Thaler. I really enjoyed watching this.

[@mike_realityi]

This was an amazing article. Thank you so much for putting it together and getting getting these interviews.

[@SMASHINGblargharghar]

Hearing from the pioneers of these technologies is such a treat. In a decade or two, these people will be gone and these recordings and interviews will be all we have left.

[@serpent77]

Takes me back. My first network was a thinnet connecting my whitebox 386 to my mom's Packard Bell 486. I saved up as a kid to get two ne2000 clones, 25' of coax, a couple of BNC connectors, T connectors, and those mysterious terminators. I installed the cards, plugged the coax, a t connector and terminator together in the back of my machine in my bedroom upstairs. threw the cable out the window and repeated the process to my mom's computer downstairs in her office. brought it all online, got drivers and personal netware installs running. first thing we tried after file shares, was playing doom over the network. What a blast! 30 years later I earn a living as a server admin/sys eng.

[@neilfmoore]

When I was in high school in the mid-to-late 90s, a friend and I built a computer lab for our school based on 10BASE-2. The school's existing network was token ring, and token ring cards and MAUs were too expensive for that to be an option for this lab of ~20 computers (each classroom had either one or two TR drops), so we set up a Linux computer built on scavenged hardware as a router (with NAT) between the two networks. A year or two later, the school district's official technology contractor discovered what we had done, and spent several thousand dollars of district money to "upgrade" the router to a Windows NT machine. I believe they kept the thinnet for a few years before eventually migrating the whole building to twisted pair.

[@ZenYeti98]

Fantastic video, great job getting these stories captured from those who were there, it helps keeps the knowledge alive.

[@joeynelson1609]

That was really well done. I enjoyed the info and the story. Cheers.

[@philipgrice1026]

Great work! I was involved in the development of several hardware recording standards during this era. It was exciting, challenging and wonderful to interact with so many sharp minded people. This brings back some lovely memories about lovely people.

[@scottfranco1962]

BNC cable Ethernet was a real revolution. All you needed was to find a computer running on it, and chain up your machine to that. We spent a lot of time throwing that up above the false ceilings, and everyone has a black cable dropping from the ceiling. I recall we were supposed to have a terminator at the end of the cable, but few of us knew where that was.

[@Deinonuchus]

On one LAN I had a HP LasrerJet 2 that had to be the last device in the chain. The NIC killed any connections past it. We had to get creative when management wanted the printer in the middle of the network run.

[@amnesiacsardine]

I am very thankful for this channels existence and all the work you put into bringing those story to light. You are doing a great service to Netizens around the WWW.

[@dougkinzinger]

What a great mini-documentary about the history of what so many of us take for granted!

[@greenhellcat]

This was fantastic, thank you for getting the interviews with Richard and Pat on video, this was thoroughly enjoyable content as someone who lived thru that era.

[@davesradiorepairs6344]

I work for HPE now, but was unaware of HP's Pat Thaler's contribution... Thanks..! In my work experience, I've worked with; SDLC / HDCL / X.25 ARCNET TokenRing-16 (was awesome compared to 10base-T) Ethernet 10base-T 10base-100 etc, etc, etc...

[@utp216]

I love all of The Serial Port videos but this one warms my heart even more. I ended up with my handle because of twisted pair wiring. You brought all of these people together and we can learn the history of these standards. Thank you so much!

[@ohasis8331]

Nice historical presentation, thank you.

[@erber-w6b]

What an awesome documentary! Fantastic job on that! I've been in IT and networking for 35+ years and I remember installing LanTastic with coax cables back in the early 90s. We're now deploying Fiber to the desktop. Fascinating!

[@colinstu]

LOVE this content, holy crap been looking for something just like this!

[@suburbhermit8792]

As an person trying to become a network Engineer, Thank you for preserving the history of this wonder of the world. Thank you to all the people you interviewed who were involved with help with creating and bringing QOL to the internet.

[@ptzzzs]

I prefer my UTP Ethernet versus Wi-Fi for PCs and it was nice learning from you and the people invovled like Bennett and Thaeler how it was created and standardized with the IEEE in the 80s. Found it amazing that 10Base-T is so old, but at the same time still a fallback for 10/100/1000 Auto Negotiation for Ethernet. This is the first video of yours I got recommended and I'm just subscribed to see more of this kind of quality content.

[@PanduPoluan]

Today the best cables are "FTP" (Foiled Twisted Pair): Still the flexibility and lightness of UTP, but with additional noise protection. Slightly more expensive than UTP, but totally worth it.

[@ThePopolou]

Well the "best" cables would in fact be S/FTP. I wonder what those early pioneers would have thought that such a product would be needed back when it was conceived.

[@lefthandedgal22]

Amazing, excellent video! You guys are great educators of this history. Much appreciation!

[@irdmoose]

Back in the early 1990's when I was using a laplink cable to send my homework to my dad from my IBM XT (NEC v20 + FAST88 card to run it at 16.66 MHz) to his 386 DX2 66, I never dreamed that I'd have a home network with 10Gb wired networking and wireless capable of reaching 6Gb/s all leading to a symmetric gig connection to the outside world. I mean, at the time Star Trek TNG kinda told us wireless data would be a thing and would be fast, but it always seemed like a far-off dream. I look forward to the future of networking technology.

[@James_Knott]

I remember those cables. I used to use one to network my home computer to my work ThinkPad (I used to work for IBM back then), both running OS/2. One nice thing with OS/2 is you didn't have to buy the software for it. It was built in with Warp 3 & Warp 4.

[@icywiener5421]

I use to start every day with cup of coffe and some nostalgic video for at least 30 mins. The more- the better. Every video from you guys means one more good day start. Thank you!

[@aaronwilliams1249]

I remember running BNC Ethernet in college in my dorm with the wire strung between two buildings so we could play with a local LAN. We had no Ethernet in our dorm building, only dial-up. Now I have 10G Ethernet running in my house and play with 100G Ethernet equipment (not twisted pair).

[@miked9104]

This was so much fun to watch! The word “standard” underpins first world life versus 3rd world life. Building infrastructure according to a tested and accepted standard is THE way to build a lasting creation.This is why we see so much social media content highlighting home construction that does NOT comply with the standard, and the extraordinary effort required to catch purposeful violations of standards. We need to filter and revitalize our technical-class work force into a majority standard-abiding group. This would certainly involve re-patriating large numbers of laborers back to their home countries where they were so heavily steeped in ignoring any standard whatsoever that the effort at constant supervision to ensure compliance becomes much more wasteful than replacing them with a worker that was raised with a standard-abiding ethos instead.

[@Chris-rc9ky]

My Grandfather worked at Bell Labs for many years. He worked on a lot of different projects. From the picturephone which was the grandfather of video calling. To undersea cables that they used between the US and Europe. One of the more underappreciated things was the Modular Jack which was the ground floor for the RJ45 and other connectors.

[@johnhaller5851]

My first officemate at Bell Labs worked on the picture phone, maybe he worked with your grandfather. I heard a few stories about the New York World’s Fair, where the picture phone first appeared. Another coworker I met while getting my Master’s degree worked at the Indianapolis Bell Labs location. Indianapolis was where AT&T made its telephones at the time, and where the RJ-11 jack and connector where invented, and eventually the 8P8C connector and jack. The inventor was awarded a connector made out of solid gold, my coworker told me. If you wonder why 25 pair connector cables were common, they were installed for secretaries, who would have a multi-line phone with a button for each person supported by them. Frequently, there were two or more secretaries, so when a secretary went to lunch, the other secretary could cover. They would also deliver the while-you-were-out notes that they took for their principal while they were out. All this was before answering machines and eventually voicemail.

[@Chris-rc9ky]

@johnhaller5851 that's amazing! It's funny that so many things that we use everyday life was created years and years ago and flopped. My grandfather sadly passed away 3 months before the iPhone 4, the first commercially successful video phone launched. He will always hold a special place in my heart.

[@coastdownhills]

Excellent video. It answers a lot of questions I never thought to ask, but should have, while dealing with tech over the years.

[@Raymond-u8x]

Incredible as always.

[@an_R_key]

Thank you for this upload. Very impressed that you got the interviews.

[@CallMeChato]

This was great. Trip down memory lane. How did the Nortel connector order become the standard? I know it by heart.

[@rivereagle5524]

Great interviews and a deep dive into the standards. When I started in IT in HS our room ran on a thin net network with a Novell 3.12 server and MS-DOS pcs. I remember the first install of Cat5, our teacher gave us a box and told us to wire the room, he got upset afterwards because the wire was hot pink! I was lucky enough to work on thin net, thin net and 30+ years of UTP. Thanks for the memories!

[@SomeGuyInSandy]

My first IT job required me to troubleshoot and maintain a thinnet network which wasn't exactly built of the best components. Every winter, as office folk started rummaging under their desks to plug in heaters, the network outages would come. Entire departments down because someone felt a little cold, lol. I got good at it though, and could isolate the breaks pretty quickly with enough practice.

[@miscellaneousanus2831]

Thanks for putting this out there. It’s actually very helpful information for doing my job.

[@bryanwann]

I'm confused when about when twisted pair was used in telco applications. All POTS lines I've seen from single pair to 100 pair bundles were all straight/untwisted. The exception being cross connect wire at demarcs/66 blocks where the pair had a slight twist which I always assumed was to keep the pair together for easier handling and organization. I thought maybe twisted pair would have come about in digital signaling, yet wikipedia says aerial cable plant had a twist, altho at a rate of a few twists per kilometer and not per inch like we see with cat X today.

[@KarlHamilton]

Same here. The pairs were only twisted slightly to keep them together. That part of the video doesn't ring true to me either. Bizarre.

[@xenadu02]

Office PBX systems from the late 70s/80s/early 90s used those 25 pair or 4/8 pair cables and I recall those having a twist in them. Not sure why exactly, probably for reduced interference from whatever else was going on in the building. That's the cabling they were talking about using since it was already in lots of office buildings. Those early PBX systems were fairly basic and needed lots of pairs to support the large stations with 2-8 lines and status lights for 100s of other stations and all the other stuff they could do like internal conference calls, transfers, and such. Actual POTS lines from the telco may not have had much of a twist but that wouldn't be relevant here.

[@James_Knott]

I'm not sure when the change happened, but when I was a kid our house, built in the mid 50s, had the old red, green, black, yellow CAT nuthin phone cable. My condo, built in the early 90s, has 3 pair CAT3 phone wiring. The 25 pair cables have been around a lot longer than that.

[@stargazer7644]

Twisted pair telco cabling originated in 1881. 25 pair twisted cable started being used in the 1950s.

[@TeslaTales59]

Another excellent video from your team. Years ago, I took care of the IT needs of a small doctors office of about 5 PCs. Each one was fitted with a 10-Base-2 connector. It worked quiite well, as we were hosting DOS applications. I also remember coils of coax under each desk. "Don't forget those little green terminators"

[@TransCanadaPhil]

When I first networked our two home computers together around 1995 I remember just stringing coax between them with BNC connectors. The NICs had both BNC and UTP connectors but I was too cheap to buy a hub (why for just 2 computers I figured?). Eventually went with a hub but the real benefit came when switches (instead of hubs) were cheap enough that every device got a full duplex connection on its own collision domain eliminating all packet collisions.

[@PanduPoluan]

Yeah the falling prices of switches makes Ethernet totally awesome! I remember when I first start my corporate career, I still found one Ethernet hub. But prices for switches had already started free-falling at that time and soon I replaced that hub with a switch. (Was easy selling the replacement plan to the higher ups as we were a stockbrokerage company and I elegantly explained that using a hub might cause delays in orders being sent to the stock exchange.)

[@kreuner11]

You don't need hub or a switch to connect two computer as long as you use a crossover or have Auto MDI-X

[@anthonywollenburg3125]

Thanks!

[@moshixmainframechannel]

Some facts are slightly off. by the 1980s there were no more 370s in service. And it didn’t take months to upgrade an IBM mainframe. Typically it was done over the weekend. They swapped the CPU model and that was it. But great video. Love it ❤

[@allangibson8494]

IBM 370’s were replaced with the IBM 390 in 1990…

[@moshixmainframechannel]

@@allangibson8494after the 370s came a whole series of machines likes the 3033 in the 70s and the 3083,3084,3081 in the eighties. 370 was a machine. 390 is an architecture, not a machine

[@kreuner11]

Probably they meant an upgrade to the 390 and up, going on to this day with their Z stuff

[@moshixmainframechannel]

@@kreuner11the 390 is not a machine. It’s an architecture. Swapping out a mainframe has consistently taken a weekend from the 60s to today. No change in time.they bring in the new CPU and attach it. Just like with the tandem the person mentions in the video. Not a big issue. Just wanted to state the facts.

[@MartinFroland]

Excellent video. Bring back memories of office computing from the 80s to the mid 90s

[@KevinDC5]

@10:00 What a BOSS!

[@jethrokelly]

This is turning into my favourite KZbin channel, and the parallel port channel, excellent video

[@georgegrubbs2966]

Another trip down tech memory lane for me. I worked with Tandem computers at GLV, Jeff Rose, et al. Love the video interviews. Congrats on a great video!!

[@adatr9410]

Some channels just deserve a subscription this is one of them .

[@thomasmaughan4798]

0:35 Yes, I checked the colors; looks like EIA/TIA 568B. So, good job with the clipart.

[@alexpacura9810]

America!

[@nicolashuot]

Thank you very much for this history. I work with Ethernet closely and it helps tremendously

[@AlexBesogonov]

I actually liked the coax bus-based networks. We had a network with 30 computers connected via a coax bus, it was just one neat wire. We even had a nice steel conduit for it. After the upgrade to UTP, we suddenly had to manage thick bundles of wires that couldn't fit in any of our conduits. The cable management also sucked, we were too poor to buy proper patch-panels and patch-cords, so the whole thing looked like a bunch of spaghetti.

[@JohnDoe4321]

You liked coax bus because you only had 30 computers! It was a good solution a that scale, but it really started to suck as the number of attachments increased. I was very happy when 10BaseT took over the world. Of course I wasn't the one who had to buy new Ethernet adapters, hubs, and switches! But as the guy who had to "fix the network" when somebody yanked on the cable, I didn't miss coax at all!

[@AlexBesogonov]

@@JohnDoe4321 Yeah, but switches for coax also existed. Of course, by that time 100MBit Ethernet was also starting to appear, and that was the death knell for coax.

[@PanduPoluan]

I was still using 10Base2 at univ when I started. It was NOT enjoyable. Someone will do something stupid with their connection and the whole network went down. Had to go lab by lab, PC by PC, to find what stupidity had happened. When we finally migrated to 10BaseT, the maintenance work became MUCH lighter. No love lost for 10Base2.

[@Benoit-Pierre]

Coax already sucked with 2 computers, and occasionally worked with 3. Often the middle computer could see the 2 around, but the extremes could rarely see each other.

[@steveurbach3093]

@@Benoit-Pierre I suspect lousy connector installs or no terminatorS at the ends (all the boards I saw, you needed a BNC T. It always needed both ports occupied (coax or Term).

[@douglasboyle6544]

This is my kind of history! Thanks for being dedicated to remembering computing's past and its pioneers. I remember starting to study computers and networking in the late 80s to early 90s and I had to learn about all of the standards (thicknet, thinnet, apple talk, and 10BaseT) and then when I actually started working in the field after college in '93 the only thing around anymore was 10BaseT. It took off like wildfire.