An Interview with Bob Metcalfe

Getsla :   Motivation. I think motivation is really big. A lot of students don't want to take that extra step. And I think using the Internet right now is an extra step.
Metcalfe :   I think you're right. Motivation is a lot of it. The lack of motivation. Any technology I've played around with requires motivation. Good teachers are wasted on unmotivated students.
Gemperlein :   Would you describe Ethernet and how it came to be?
Metcalfe :   The Ethernet is a system for connecting computers within a building. Hardware. There is some software involved, but ethernet per se is hardware; it's wiring and chips. The chips control what goes on the wiring. The whole purpose of it is so all the computers in a building can talk to each other at very high speed. You know, in 1996, this is not such a big idea. It's obvious. But in 1973, ethernet was invented, there were no personal computers. Can you imagine that?

I was extremely fortunate to be a member of the research staff at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where we were building some of the first personal computers. And I was the networking guy, so they asked me to build the network for the computers. And the principal goal there was we were also building what I think is the world's first laser printer. And this is in 1973, and this laser printer was a big copier with a laser in it. Instead of a shining light on a paper and having it go on the drum, the laser went on the drum. And this printer would produce a page per second. Boom, boom, very fast. And resolution of this printer was 500 dots per inch. So if you do the multiplication, each page was millions of bits, and it was 1 per second. So the amount of data necessary to drive this printer was measured in millions of bits.

I am fond of saying the Ethernet was invented on May 22, 1973 in a memo that I wrote at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center . But that's marketing. In fact, the Ethernet was invented very gradually over a period of several years.
So the problem was: How do you take these computers we were going to build, it was a breakthrough idea, we were going to give everybody their own computer in this building. Big enough so you could get it under your desk. Today you'd call it a tower. Bigger than a tower; squatter than a tower. And it was built just so it would slide under a desk. Then it had a display, not a mouse, and a keyboard. Early machine. And we had this crazy idea that everyone would have one. And my job was to connect them together so they could print on that laser printer. The network had to be fast enough to carry...

The two requirements of this network that were novel were (1) it had to be very fast to drive the very fast laser printer, and (2) it had to connect hundreds of computers within a building. Prior to that, there'd never been hundreds of computers in a building. There were 2 or 1 if you're lucky.

Getsla :   Like you're setting up in a no-man's land, sort of?
Metcalfe :   No, but this gets back to your motivation point. It wasn't that anyone particularly doubted that you could do it. They just didn't know why ... why would you want to do this? I remember being on a panel at a computer conference, where the gentleman next to me, when he heard my speech, had a little argument afterwards . The new modems that year were 1200 baud modems. He thought that was overkill. Because if you use a 600 baud modem, and you typed out a document, it would go by on the screen-like this: wooo! And he figured at 1200 baud, you couldn't read it. So 600 was fast enough. And I was talking about 3 million bits per second. Like 10,000 times faster than they were.

Most of the people I ran into couldn't imagine why you would want to do that. Cause they had never had personal computers. We were fortunate at Xerox Research to have personal computers, so we sort of had some inkling of why you'd want to do this.

What did you think then about the guys who gave you that job and took you out as CEO?
They were geniuses!

The answer to your question about the idea. I am fond of saying the Ethernet was invented on May 22, 1973 in a memo that I wrote at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center . But that's marketing. In fact, the Ethernet was invented very gradually over a period of several years. As a graduate student, I worked on the computer lab which was a predecessor of the ethernet. Which introduced us all to the notion of connecting computers together and how you might do that to send data packets around.

And then, to get my Ph.D. at Harvard, I studied a network, the University of Hawaii, a ... network. Which was a network of potentially moving terminals in the Hawaiian islands connected by radio to a central computer. And the ethernet was basically the obvious thing to do next. . .and I just happend to be one of the people sitting there doing one of the obvious things.

Getsla :   So, were there other people working on this, too?
Metcalfe :   Oh, yes. Partners and competitors.

Getsla: Divisions, like?

Metcalfe: Well, there were a bunch of partners. The main competition was the people at the University of California at Irvine, called the Irvine Ring. If you had a bunch of computers, you'd run a cable from one to the other to the other in a ring. You'd pass data around this ring. In fact, I wrote in my Ethernet proposal that we would try to do a different system, the Ethernet system. Because they were already working on the ring. There was no need for us to do another ring. We would take a different tack.

Gemperlein :   What's the hardest thing you've ever done?
Metcalfe :   The hardest thing I ever did was in 1982. The Board of Directors of a company that I had founded (3 Com), a board that I had recruited, person-by-person, informed me that I was no longer going to be the chief executive of my company. And I did not quit my job. I stayed and became the head of sales and marketing. The hardest thing I did was not to throw a blind fit and slam the door and storm out in anger and rage over their stupidity. I stayed because (a) I had chosen them for this job. These were the smartest people around, and I had been very competent in recruiting these people, and now they giving me exactly the advice that I had chosen them to give. How could I ignore them?

Second of all, they weren't firing me exactly. They were giving me a job to do, my favorite thing, which is to be in sales and marketing. So it wasn't like they were saying, ''You're a worthless jerk." They were saying, "You'd be better doing this than that." Which was a moderating position that didn't make me feel completely worthless.

And, third, I owned most of the stock in the company. And if I left the company -- I believed -- it would all go in the toilet and I wouldn't make any money. So I stayed. That was the hardest thing.

Gemperlein: Did you surprise them by staying? Do you think they wanted you to quit?

Metcalfe: I never asked them the question. Gee. I probably should have. Probably did. I would bet that they thought that I was gonna storm out. Because that's what we founders usually do. As you recall, Steve Jobs, my mentor, stormed out of Apple in a huff, while Mr. Scully approached from the side. There are lots of examples of irate founders who have been given good advice and just ...(stormed out).

Gemperlein :   What's the most fun you've ever had?
Metcalfe :   Um, I've had a lot of fun. How can I choose? The most fun was being head of sales and marketing at 3Com Corporation for the 24 months ending July 1993, when we went from approximately zero in sales to $1 million dollars a month in sales and the company started to bring 50, 60, 70, 80, 85% per quarter.

Gemperlein: What did you think then about the guys who gave you that job and took you out as CEO?

Metcalfe: They were geniuses!

Here's an interesting story in the history of 3Com. I was the head of sales from zero to a million a month. But then sales changed. Scale it out. The $1 million a month, it was personal selling. Fact that I had invented the technology and the fact that I could give speeches on end for hours after hours on any subject related to this meant that I could be successful.

When it got to a million a month, it became building a sales team, giving sales compensation, organizing sales territories, things that I had no knowledge of.

So we recruited a guy and he was head of sales from $1 million a month (I'm sketching now) to about $5 million a month. And then sales become something else. . . We got another guy . . .who took us from $5 to $25 million a month, and then he ran out of ideas. That is, he succeeded wildly, but then didn't have a job anymore ... The point is that at some point somebody else has to take over, and they're good to a certain point.

I don't have any time to watch TV. Second of all, my kids are 7 and 9 and I'm trying to bring them up so they don't watch TV. So if dad watched TV, what moral authority would we have to keep them off the TV?

So I would say that was the most fun, selling all those products and succeeding at it. That was fun.