20 years in IT history: Connectivity

Ethernet coinventor Bob Metcalfe

With every passing year, the amazing power of connectivity was becoming more evident. At least in theory, every device you plugged into the network inherited the assets and resources of every other machine on that net. In 1980 the inventor of Ethernet, Bob Metcalfe, took a stab at quantifying the gains to networking by proposing a law that the utility of a network went up with the square of the devices connected to it. While people did and do argue over whether Metcalfe got the exponent precisely right, nobody doubts that he nailed the spirit of the thing.

But getting stability, predictability and compatibility out of a grab bag of machines, themselves in constant flux, was not easy. Novell had been working on the problem since 1983. By 1989 enough hair had been trimmed from the software that people of reasonable skill could use it. Netware 3 was networking for the rest of us, plus it was optimized for Intel's very popular 386 processor. As this combo spread throughout the world it took with it the gospel of connectivity, leaving hosts of beleaguered CIOs struggling to migrate their systems from the quiet world of host/terminal to the mosh pit of client/server LANs.

1990: Archie

In the early years of the Internet, the connection between users and resources was quite informal. If A wanted a specific kind of file or program, he asked around, hoping that someone had seen something like that somewhere and remembered the address. If B wrote a cool program that she thought others might like, she tried to find ways to spread the news This was not ideal, but in the early days of the Net everybody knew everybody else (practically), so the problem was not acute.