[wistlo]

The archetypal "good enough" solution:

Instead of preventing collisions, tolerating and managing them.

I think of Ethernet often when assessing how close to perfection I need to get in my work.

[zokier]

It is also lesson of doing something now and rewriting it later. For example no modern ethernet network uses cd/csma anymore and it was pretty iconic part of original ethernet. Overall ethernet on physical layer has seen quite an evolution from coax and vampire taps, to twisted pair and hubs, to switched networks, and nowdays wireless, single-pair, optical, and virtual networks

[AlbertCory]

You left out a step: ThinNet coax, without vampire taps!

That's what was at 3Com when I joined in 1985. I even have a section in The Big Bucks where I took down the entire company for a few seconds by disconnecting the coax. No one noticed.

[xenadu02]

Ethernet is also an example of a tech that has an easy scaling path: hubs with switched uplink ports made it really easy to divide collision domains. In the early days before everything was switched you could instantly reduce collision losses with a little bit of hardware in the server closet with no other changes to the network.

[bombcar]

I remember when hubs were still common; I don't know if any have been made for decades. Even bargain basement switches are switched now, and often even have spanning tree and other 'previously enterprise' features.

[jacquesm]

True, but it did detect transmission in progress (carrier sensing) which helped to avoid collisions in the first place.