alt Hacker NewsVery cool! Also cool to see inside. It really is directly attached with nothing in between, I honestly wasn't expecting there to be NOTHING in the signal path.
> In a sense, it’s a revolutionary way of how to network — it separates the “what” from the “how”. To be fair: that revolution already happened over 20 years ago
How quickly we have forgotten about AUI (Attachment Unit Interface)
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kohlschuetter • today at 12:23 PM
Thanks!
AUI: So that's what that port next to the BNC connector on the 3COM 3C509B was for! We've come a long way.
AUI was still very much alive with XAUI[0] during the 10Gbps era!
If you're willing to be a little bit more flexible, the MAC-to-PHY distinction never really went away with the various MII generations: every speed from 10Mbps to 10Gbps is available using more-or-less the same interface.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XAUI
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media-independent_interface