what was the first private company to develop Ethernet technology and when?

Question

what was the first private company to develop Ethernet technology and when?

Answer 1

The original Ethernet draft was written by Robert Metcalf (founder of 3Com in 1979) and David Boggs from 1973 - 1975 while they worked at Xerox. After founding 3Com, Metcalf convinced DEC, Intel and Xerox to work on a standard.

The first Ethernet standard (as we generally know it today) was published in September of 1980 and eventually lead to the death of Arcnet and Token Ring, the primary LAN physical layer topologies of the day. This propelled 3Com into the forefront of networking companies and they are still a major player to this day.