Talk:Classic Ethernet

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Classic Ethernet

Is Classic Ethernet a term used by authoritative sources? This name is not mentioned in Ethernet. It is showing up a few places in a "Classic+Ethernet" Google search] but not strong. I had suggested 10 megabit Ethernet. Earlier, sub 10 Mbit/s, incarnations are known as experimental Ethernet. ~Kvng (talk) 22:19, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, e.g. in Buddy Shipley (2004): "Installer's Guide to Local Area Networks", Thomson Del Mar or in Bryan Carne (2004): "A Professional's Guide to Data Communication in a TCP/IP World", Artech House. Nightwalker-87 (talk) 22:33, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Kvng I share your concerns. As far as I can tell, no official designation "Classic Ethernet" exists. The most definitive source would be the IEEE standards, but since they're paywalled, I can't access them to check. :(

Every instance I can find is either:

some private definition (like the book below or here, where they put "classic" in quotes to indicate it's not an official term),
a simple differentiator to a proprietary technology (like in Cisco documentation where they use it to contrast with their FabricPath technology),
or one of many, many places where it is simply the adjective "classic" being used to describe Ethernet of whatever ilk is relevant to the sentence.

Additionally,

Some sources (like www.tutorialspoint.com/switched-ethernet-vs-classic-ethernet) use "classic Ethernet" to mean Ethernet with the shared collision domain, but that definition conflicts with this page's, since 100Base-TX hubs (that were not switches!) existed, too. (Not to mention that that site is completely unsourced, so I'd consider it very low reliability.)
Some sources do share the definition this page uses (more or less), like this one. But again, no sign that this is in any way a defined term.
It is noteworthy is that the term "classic Ethernet" shows up disproportionately in the context of the types of Ethernet frames and extensions to them (both proprietary and later IEEE standards).

@Nightwalker-87 Your own sources refute your claim of this being a canonical name. Carne (2004) introduces "Classic Ethernet" with the statement:

I have chosen to call the original version Classic Ethernet to distinguish it from the IEEE 802.3 LAN that is universally called Ethernet.

So it is very clear that it was the author's private definition of the term, used to mean pre-IEEE 802.3 Ethernet. — tooki (talk) 14:37, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Tooki:: Current IEEE 802 standards aren't paywalled – free after registration on https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/browse/standards/get-program/page/series?id=68. But no need to check, they're not using "Classic Ethernet". --Zac67 (talk) 15:19, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, much obliged! (I guess I’m too used to the IEC standards, which would be very helpful for my day job, being paywalled.)

Any thoughts on what this article’s fate should be? — tooki (talk) 16:38, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are you considering deleting it? It contains important information about certain vintage of Ethernet. ~Kvng (talk) 12:36, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it were my decision, I would integrate the information into the main Ethernet article and delete this one, since it suggests the existence of a term that doesn’t really exist. — tooki (talk) 12:25, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's a potential WP:UNDUE issue with that approach. The other variants have their own main articles per WP:SUMMARY style, e.g. Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet. But I guess this article (Classic Ethernet) is a second-level summary of the older formats, e.g. 10BASE-5, 10BASE-2. And then there's Ethernet over twisted pair. Maybe we need to draw a diagram of how all these Ethernet articles relate to one another and figure out what to do from there. ~Kvng (talk) 13:56, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The only alternative I see is moving this article to 10 Mbit/s Ethernet – is that really better? Early Ethernet? Slow Ethernet? Not really. --Zac67 (talk) 15:28, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mbit/s vs Mbps

Mbps is by far the most common way of abbreviating megabits per second. Shouldn't we use the WP:COMMONNAME even if it is not the ISO term. Volunteer1234 (talk) 21:26, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WP generally prefers SI units like Mbit/s, check WP:UNITNAMES. --Zac67 (talk) 05:15, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. And consistency, WP likes consistency. The WP:COMMONNAME assertion here is debatable in substance and debatable as to whether that policy applies outside article titles. ~Kvng (talk) 14:06, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]