By now, you know the big attraction of Gigabit Ethernet: it
packages information just like classic Ethernet but moves the
bits 100 times faster. Since Bob Metcalfe at Xerox invented
Ethernet in the early 1970s, he has enhanced it several times.
Standard Ethernet’s transmission speed has been increased twice
in recent years: Fast Ethernet (100 Base-T) was standardized as
IEEE 802.3u in 1994 and Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Base-T) was
standardized as IEEE 802.3z in June 1998. Gigabit Ethernet ran
first on fiber optic cable, but the unshielded twisted pair
(UTP) option was standardized by IEEE 802.3ab in June 1999. Most
likely, the new standard will first be used for server farms and
backbones, since this much bandwidth is hard to justify for a
single user! Nevertheless, vendors expect prices to plummet fast
enough to make Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop economically
viable soon. In fact, Jeff Shapiro, author of “Gigabit Ethernet
on the Fast Track to the Desktop,” Network World, (June 12,
2000), predicted Gigabit wil