Two years later, the company patented Xerox Ethernet, alleging Metcalfe, David Boggs, Chuck Thacker and Butler Lampson as inventors of standard for computer networking. Ethernet came into commercial use in the early 1980s as 10BASE5, thick coaxial cable, which looked more like a garden hose than the RJ-45 Ethernet cables Cat5/Cat6 that we are now using.

Meanwhile Metcalfe in 1979 founded a company 3Com, while Ethernet was supported by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Intel and Xerox, and year by year the continued to spread more and more spread at the expense of competing standards Token Ring and Token Bus. Initially, Ethernet cards were made just for computers such as the PDP-11 and VAX, then in 1982. the 3Com launched the first Ethernet network card for the IBM PC.

Bob Metcalfe on the occasion of this anniversary, will be answering questions on Reddit - take a look here at his answers on how much money he earned on Ethernet, why are some things made the way they are and his general opinion about  is title "Father of the Ethernet“.

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