INTERVIEW WITH A LEGEND
Interview of Bob Metcalfe by Patrick Grote

	I owe Bob Metcalfe. See, I am a network engineer. Had Bob not
invented Ethernet I wouldn't be where I am today. What would I be doing?
Oh, probably writing maintenance code for a Fortune 500 company in
Cobol. That is hell, isn't it?

	Recently, Bob has been making waves in many areas. For a while he
held the bully pulpit at InfoWorld, a trade magazine with integrity, and
made his mark in a variety of areas including the future of BBSing. As
Bob relates, "the only way they would let me write an article is if I
became Publisher."

	What you find out about Bob Metcalfe by conversing with him over the
medium he created is that he has that rare combination of talent and
skill that composes an ultra winner. The flair and enthusiasm he shows
for marketing is only outpaced by his proactive and skillful wield of
technology.

	Enough of my thoughts, let's get to the questions. BTW, this
interview as conducted entirely via email. My first contact from Bob
was a flameless response to a press release I left about CyberNews. He
very professionally pointed out a perception problem I may have created.
Little did he know his tips would lead to this <grin>

CYBERNEWS: 	OK, to get this out of the way, you are the father of
ethernet, the backbone of the LAN movement. Briefly, how did this happen
and more importantly, as it was unfolding, did you realize what you had
done?
 
BOB:	First of all, it's Ethernet not ethernet or EtherNet or
ETHERNET. Thanks. 
	
	Second, Ethernet (aka IEEE/ISO 802.3) was invented in a memo I wrote
on May 22, 1973 at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. My job was to
connect a bunch of experimental personal computers, called Altos, to the
page-per-second 500-dpi laser printer we were building down the hall,
and to one another's disks, and to our minicomputer for E-mail and
access to the Internet (then called ARPANET). My PhD thesis, published
in 1973, studied the ARPANET and the Alohanet. Ethernet is derived from
those, only in its first prototype it ran at 2.94 megabits per second
(say 3), 100 to a 1000 times faster, depending on how fast you think
they ran, and it ran on coaxial cable among 100s of computers in a
building.


CYBERNEWS: 	What two major trends do you see driving the PC and
Networking industry on the next year?
 
BOB:	Price and CD-ROM will continue driving multimedia PCs into
homes. Online services, especially the Internet.


CYBERNEWS: 	How did you get started in the PC business? How long have
you been in it?

BOB:	I built a simple digital calculator in 8th grade in 1959. My
first paying job as a computer programmer was at Raytheon in 1965. My
first PC was in 1968, a PDP-8S, the first computer, unfortunately for
me, small enough to be stolen. There was no PC industry that I recall
when I went to Xerox PARC in 1972 and did Ethernet for Altos. We built
several Xerox workstations in the late 1970s, which led to the Sun
workstation and the Macintosh PC. I got an Apple II in 1979 upon
founding 3Com -- perhaps this was my entry into the PC business. I've
been using Macintoshes since 1984. I bought 3Com's first IBM PC in late
1981 and we developed PC Ethernet for it -- there are now 50,000,000
Ethernet connections. I led a 3Com team that developed, manufactured,
and marketed 100,000 286 Ethernet netstations in the mid-80s. I sold
Ethernet adapters for $5,000 in 1981, now some good ones go for under
$50. 3Com is now a $1B company and in the Fortune 500 -- they did that
last little $600M without me (;->).


CYBERNEWS: 	No one can just "do computers" all the time. Do you hit the
golf course? Play a little ping pong? What?
 
BOB:	We've just moved to a sheep farm in mid-coast Maine and have two
kids, Julia (7) and Max (5). Do I need any other hobbies? I used to be
very good at tennis, but the years and inattention have taken their
toll.
 

CYBERNEWS:	Do the words Pearl Jam mean anything to you? What type of
music are you in to?
 
BOB: 	I've been to an AC/DC concert, which reconfirmed for me that I
prefer oldies out of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I especially like the group
Paul McCartney had before Wings. The Shirelles ("Moma said there'd be
days like this"). Eagles. Doobie Brothers. Young White Cannibals?
Anything by Carol King. Roy Orbison. Hall and Oates. Heart. Peter
Frampton. Chuck Berry with beer... The list goes on, and as you can see,
I'm not very selective.


CYBERNEWS: 	How did your involvement with InfoWorld begin? Why did you
recently step down as Publisher?

BOB:	I retired from 3Com after 11 years in 1990 -- it was doing $400M
and I had outlived my usefulness there. I took up writing, doing columns
for Network Computing, Communications Week, Computerworld, etc. Pat
McGovern, founder of IDG, owner of InfoWorld and 200 other publications
worldwide, was given the idea by InfoWorld's Stewart Alsop of my being
InfoWorld Publisher/CEO. Pat and I knew one another from having attended
meetings of MIT alumni who have endowed professorships at MIT -- MIT has
a Metcalfe professor of writing and I now serve on the executive
committee of MIT's board of trustees.

InfoWorld is one of the five largest (by sales) computer publications in
the world, and I could not pass up the chance of starting a new career
at the top.

In two and a half years our team increased InfoWorld profits by two and
half times and is now booming!

Now I have moved to Maine with my family and cannot run InfoWorld from
there, and so I'm expanding my Iway punditry and increasing my role at
IDG with headquarters in Boston (where we have a townhouse).

It's a bit awkward, I've learned, being a trade publisher, selling ads,
and being a trade journalist, being negative on vendors and products
when they deserve it, which is pretty often. I drove maybe 5 advertisers
out of InfoWorld -- they eventually came back because of the value of
our readers and InfoWorld's credibility.


CYBERNEWS: 	What was the last trade show you went to? What trade show do
you find to be the best for information? Fun?

BOB: 	I attended COMDEX in November at Las Vegas, but who didn't, and
then internet World in Washington -- a much better show. My favorite
conferences are InfoWorld's own Agenda (for the PC industry by
invitation only) and Demo (for thoughtful demos of selected (new)
products).


CYBERNEWS: 	Just for grins, what kind of car do you drive?
 
BOB: 	I just sold my owned-since-new 1978 Mercedes 240D and now drive
my wife's old Volvo station wagon. She has a new Range Rover. We now
also own, but they won't let me drive, a John Deere tractor and a
3/4-ton Dodge 4X4 truck with snow plow.


CYBERNEWS: 	On average, how many mail messages do you receive a day?
What do you use to read mail? Do you filter your mail?
 
BOB: 	These days I receive and answer on average 25 messages per day,
except during big weeks, like the one recently in which I asked
InfoWorld readers to vote on whether Microsoft should be allowed to buy
Intuit and got 500+ responses in 10 days. I read but could not answer
all of those.


END INTERVIEW

	So, is Bob about the most down to earth genius you have ever read
about? He kiddingly said we needed to wait for the book about him for
more information. I am convinced there is a movie in his life somewhere!

