🚀 go-pugleaf

Our office just got a new wiring job, and a dreaded new word has come into
my life:  Ethernet.  

Currently, to get our PCs to talk to anything else, we plug a serial cable 
into the back of the PC, run a nice terminal program such as Procomm Plus,
and login to a bigger machine (almost exclusively Unix workstations, right now.
Before you actually get to login to a Unix box, there's another machine that
you talk to that let's you tell it just WHICH machine you want to use...)

Now that the wiring is done, they say we'll be switching over to Ethernet.  
I need to learn something about Ethernet... specifically what cards we need
to buy for the PCs, and how Ethernet cards on PC let you "talk" to other
machines.

First off, just what is Ethernet?  I assume it's just another protocol
like RS-232, and you can basically feed the Ethernet card anything you want, 
right?  If so, instead of using a terminal program like we have been,
how does one access the data coming in on the Ethernet?

Overall, I guess I'm really just very confused.  I'd be very happy
if someone could tell me the basics of how a PC on an Ethernet
network works!

Thanks for any help that you people can give me.  I really appreciate it!

						---Joel Kolstad
					Reply to: kolstad@cae.wisc.edu