Discussion of the similarities and differences between Ethernet and the World Wide Web and their prospects for the future.

Initially, computers were stand-alone complex mainframes. Time-sharing enabled these to serve a number of ‘workstations’, making best use of scarce resources and fulfilling the growing need for computational power by scientific institutions. However this was not ideal - an increased number of users meant that the processing power of the system was shared and, inevitably, the whole system slowed down.

Ethernet was a step towards making better use of expensive resources and arose as a practical solution to connect workstations with laser printers. The development of the World Wide Web was a further step, connecting not just Local Area Networks (LANS) and Wide Area Networks (WANs) but creating a vast world-wide pool of resources and knowledge. Therefore both Ethernet and the Web are involved in the practical task of linking computers together in order to share resources and information.

For Ethernet, special software had to be created - network operating systems responsible for making computer communication as foolproof as possible. Likewise, for the Web, special server and browser programs were necessary to ensure the smooth transfer of information from server to client. Both instances of special software also required the creation of protocols - rules governing the communication methods, language and technical details.

Already existing technologies were incorporated into both designs. Ethernet linked workstations with laser printers and Metcalfe based his design on the already proven system of party telephone lines. Berners-Lee devised his Internet protocols as a means of linking existing server and desktop systems and used SGML as a basis for HTML.

Differences between Ethernet and the Web are mainly in size and scope. Whereas Ethernet is a structured bus network, limited by its physical cabling, the Web is an almost infinite network. As long as a computer can communicate using the protocols of the Web and is connected to a ‘gateway’ computer which has a direct physical connection to the network, any machine anywhere can access the Web.

Ethernet is a combination of specialised cabling and protocol-based operating system software on one site. The Web is an amalgamation of browser and server software, also protocol-based, but not reliant on special local cabling for its worldwide network connections.

Ethernet came from a team working at Xerox PARC headed by Bob Metcalfe who could draw on the resources and brainpower of some of the best scientists in the business. Yet the whole concept and design of the World Wide Web came from just one man - Tim Berners-Lee. He was well supported by his institution, the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, but he devised the protocols and he wrote the first Web software with help from colleague, Robert Cailleau.

Faster Ethernet connections have been developed but, with the world moving towards wireless technology, it is clear that wireless networking will also be important in the future. Nevertheless, due to increasing demand on the airwaves from mobile communications, there will be a place for local physical cabling for some time to come. Faster physical connections between networks are the key to the future of the Web since cable and backbone provision will be better able to accommodate popular streaming audio and video - both hogs of precious bandwidth. The Web has come a very long way since Berners-Lee’s original vision of an academic, text-only medium to enable scientists to share information.