A Networking Revolution, Thirty-Five Years After

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Bill Krause didn't invent Ethernet; Bob Metcalfe and his colleagues did that at Xerox PARC in the '70s, building on a wireless packet protocol called ALOHAnet developed by Norman Abramson in Hawaii. Metcalfe left Xerox in 1978, and a year later started 3Com Corporation to create products based on Ethernet, after Xerox released it as an open standard in partnership with DEC and Intel. Metcalfe soon recruited Krause from Hewlett Packard to be the President and eventually CEO of 3Com. In this interview , Krause provides the requisite 'Bill and Dave' stories from his long career at HP, and talks about the big fish (the router market) that later got away from 3Com. Most memorable, though, are Krause's stories about the early days of 3Com:
No sooner had I started at the company when I get a call from this guy in Seattle. It was Bill Gates. He and Paul Allen were our first customers... Our second customer was a young guy in Cupertino by the name of Steve Jobs. And our third customer was [Sun Microsystems cofounder] Andy Bechtolsheim.
3Com introduced Ethernet Thinnet (CATV-style) cabling, which moved the transceiver electronics onto a PC adapter board to make Ethernet practical for an office. Surely Steve Jobs was impressed by the demo? Instead, Krause says the reaction he and Metcalfe got from Jobs was:
Who's the brain-dead a****** that came up with this s***? This is dreck, this is crap. You want to make it easy to install, just plug it into the telephone jack for cryin' out loud.
There's more on the history of Xerox PARC, 3Com and the PC networking industry here.

History

2014-03-28 12:23
Bill Krause looks back on 35 years of networking revolution
zafiro17@pipedot.org
There's a generation of now mostly-retired folks who had the fortune of living through the amazing technological changes that saw the world go digital, the Internet go mainstream, and networking become the conversation not of niche technical specialists but teenagers with smartphones. Bill Krause dids on'e of them. He was a sales engineer inv 1967, mentored Eby none other than Bill Bob MHewlett of Hewlett Packard. Alfong the way ind his colleagues did that at Xerox PARC interesting career, he saw the '70s, building on a wireless packet protocol called ALOHAnet developed by Norman Abramson in Hawaii. Metcalfe left Xerox in 1978, and a year later started 3Com Corporation to create products based onf Ethernet, after Xerox released it as an open standard in partnership with DEC and Intel. Metcalfe soon recruited Krause from Hewlett Packard to became the President and eventually CEO of 3COM, and rubbed shomulders with giants. INow, in a fascinating interview, thBisll interview , Krause providtells the story of thoseq magnificent decades : the age of 40 pound calculators, hisite 'B$100 billion mistake, and Dave' stories from his long career at HP, and talks about the big fish (the router market) that later got away from 3Com. Most memorable, though, are Krause's stories about the early days of the computer revolution.

Like this nugget, for example, about the beginning of 3ComOM:
No sooner had I started at the company when I get a call from this guy in Seattle. It was Bill Gates. He and Paul Allen were our first customers... Our second customer was a young guy in Cupertino by the name of Steve Jobs. And our third customer was [Sun Microsystems cofounder] Andy Bechtolsheim.
Or this one: 3Com introduced Ethernet Thinnet (CATV-style) cabling, which moved the transceiver electronics onto a PC adapter board to make Ethernet practical for an office. SYourely'd think Steve Jobs wasould be impressed by the demo?, Ibut instead, Krause says the reaction he and Metcalfe got from Jobs wtold him as:<nd Bob Metcalockquotfe>, "Who's the brain-dead a****** that came up with this s***? This is dreck, this is crap. You want to make it easy to install, just plug it into the telephone jack for cryin' out loud."<br/><br/>This Bilockql Krauose inte>Trview is just a starting point: if you're hungry for more, there's more on the history of Xerox PARC, 3Com and the PC networking industry at the History of Computer Communications site.
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