Connectivity

Robert (Bob) Metcalfe, Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas in Austin, will present the 68th Bernard Price Memorial Lecture.

The single most important new fact about the human condition is that we are all connected. In just 50 short years we have managed to connect half of the people on earth, some four billion individuals. Broadband connectivity is the fundamental enabler for today’s digital world. Irrespective of the type of physical medium that is used to provide such connectivity, whether this be cable, fibre or wireless, Ethernet is the basic protocol that is used to deliver such connectivity and consequently has become the prime enabler of the Internet, which today is 50 years old having being conceived in 1969 as a network of university mainframe computers. In simple terms Ethernet provides the rules that dictates how network devices or nodes format and transmit data packets between one another.

Invented by the presenter on May 22nd 1973 Ethernet has become the fundamental building block for Digital Transformation. This lecture will provide insight into the history behind the development and evolution of Ethernet to where it stands today, as well as discuss how Ethernet will support the future connectivity requirements needed to drive emerging technologies such as those emanating from the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

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