Industry observer John Saxon recently posted some interesting thoughts on networking and assorted other terms which have come into everyday vocabulary through technology. It’s an article worth thinking about.

As Saxon notes, new words and phrases accompany advances in convenience or improvements -- “Internet” one example he uses. “Xerox” was another, you didn’t say “Hey Mel, photocopy those reports for the meeting,” you told Mel to Xerox them. You didn’t ask your mother to hand you a tissue, you said “Mom, gimme a Kleenex.”

The Brits use the word “hoover” where Americans use “vacuum” in terms of a housekeeping chore. (Guess what company introduced the vacuum on a mass market scale in England.)

Saxon thinks “Metro Ethernet” could be another popular term like “Internet.” As he explains, “Ethernet is a way to connect in a network, using a cable to join computer to computer, or computer to device or just computer to modem for Internet access. Since most computers are built ready to network, there is little to understand in setting up except which wire to purchase or router to set up. The term Ethernet implies a wired connection, but a wireless system is referred to as Wi-Fi.”

As he points out, bandwidth growth has pretty much kept capacity on pace with demand: “The Metro Area Networks, or MANs, are a new procedure for networking that fills in between the local and wide area network slots.”

The advantages to metro Ethernet are that it can be wired, helping business to connect in a dedicated way. The limitations are very few as to speed and capacity, he notes, “so there would be plenty of availability and versatility, with virtually no waste.”

Metro Area Networks are not restricted locally, nor does the network disconnect one from the other, Saxon explains, pointing out that the benefits of scalability “will deliver the exact requirements for the network, without being inefficient in too much or too little.”

And yes, a network can be closed or open, where a closed network would be one used for a particular business, with a dedicated system of applications and communications, as Saxon says: “This can be a type of intranet, yet still use the remote capabilities of metro Ethernet.”