Ethernet Ethernet was originally developed by DIX - the D igital Corporation, the I ntel Corporation, and the X erox Corporation in the early 1970s. Ethernet is known as a spanning tree topology because the networks expand by branching in tree structures that do not allow redundant paths between nodes. The original Ethernet and later IEEE 802.3 protocols are similar but not usually interchangeable. However, Ethernet and the IEEE 802.3 standards differ in ways significant enough to make standards incompatible in terms of packet formats. At the Physical Layer, Ethernet and IEEE 802.3 are generally compatible in terms of cables, connectors, and electronic devices.
Ethernet is the most popular network standard.
It has become especially popular in many university and government installations. Most versions of Ethernet NICs are configured using jumpers to set addresses and interrupts . An example of an Ethernet NIC is shown above. With some cards, however, the active connector can be selected with configuration software. Addresses are assigned by IEEE to the vendor for the first three bytes of a six-byte address.