Introduction
Since the Local Area Networks (LAN) concept was defined 30 years ago, many technologies have been developed to occupy this area of the market. Names such as Token Ring, Token Bus, DQDB, FDDI, LATM, 100VG and Any LAN were once relatively common; however Ethernet has out-lived them all, becoming the de facto standard, used in almost all LAN installations.
Despite the limited performance achieved initially, a number of important reasons made Ethernet a winner, including low cost, simplicity, flexibility, and scalability. The most important factor was technological unification, because this guaranteed smooth interworking without the need for specialized gateways. In other words the network is a mean to connect computers, but not the goal, and Ethernet received the necessary support from manufacturers and service providers to finally be universally accepted.
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