Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
was developed at Cambridge University. However, neither of these implementations ever
morphed into a commercial product.
As has been so often the case in the development of all aspects of commercial com-
puting, ARCnet was in many ways out of date from a R&D point view well before its in-
stallation at Chase. During the years 1973 - 1975, engineers at Xerox PARC designed what
they called the "Ethernet," a "packet switch" network which they installed for use at the
PARC in 1976. Ethernet offered the appeal of being device- and operating system-neutral,
allowing any number of different platforms - such as PC-compatibles and Macs - to share
network resources.
In the small computer marketplace of business users, integration of multiple differing
platforms was at first inhibited by the distribution of "closed" machine- and operating
system-specific networking products such as AppleTalk, which shipped with the first gen-
eration of Macintosh machines.
The first commercial Ethernet solution to this problem came in the form of Novell
NetWare. Initially released in 1983, this networking product was to remain dominant well
into the 1990s, at which point its prominence would end in the face of Microsoft's Win-
dows NT Advanced Server and Windows for Workgroups.
Founded in 1979 by veterans of Provo, Utah's Eyring Research Institute (ERI), Novell
is today a subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. Throughout its life, the firm has focused on
enterprise operating systems such as NetWare, upon which its initial fortunes were based.
Per Novell's own corporate literature: "Novell helped invent the corporate network in the
early 1980s and continues to drive technology for business today. Network software began
with the sharing of files and printers within local area networks (LANs) and evolved into
the management of wide area networks that enabled enterprise-class computing and, ulti-
mately, the Internet."
The NetWare network operating system enabled cooperative multitasking using net-
work protocols based on the Xerox Network Systems stack. NetWare evolved from a very
simple concept: file sharing instead of disk sharing. LAN products had, up until the release
of NetWare, been based on the concept of providing shared direct disk access: disk sharing.
As of 1984, when IBM endorsed Novell's alternative approach of file sharing as opposed to
disk sharing, NetWare came for a time to own the small computer networking marketplace,
being the preferred network operating system for the sharing of files and peripherals and
the linking of machines for that new, radical inter-office tool called "e-mail."
In 1988,
InfoWorld
pointed out that shipments of token-ring networks (such as
ARCnet) were in "sharp ascent" while Ethernets represented some 78% of the total network
operating systems installed base, with NetWare Ethernets at almost 70%. Per an official
Novell statement on its history: "Novell developed a PC networking system that designated
one machine to manage the network and control access to shared devices, such as disk
drives and printers. Through the 1980s, corporate requirements for networks grew signific-
