Ethernet: from broadcast protocol to virtualization

Invented in the mid-1970s by Xerox, Ethernet has become a de facto standard for local area networks. Yet who, just a few years ago, would have bet on this slow, restrictive and very unscalable protocol in its coaxial version?

However, this protocol has been able to adapt, and its many variations now make it possible to transport data at very high speeds (10 Gbyte/s), across the world, and to partition – and therefore virtualize – several users/applications.

• Reminder of faults

  • And yet, the story began badly: the basic Ethernet protocol is a level 2 protocol in the OSI model (standardized by IEEE 802.3, then by ISO/IEC 8802-3), and is, by design, a "broadcast" network.

    A broadcast network is a very simple network:...