The convenience of existing cables and connectors seems to be the motivation.
> The first Ethernet used 9.5-mm coaxial cable, also called ThickNet, or as we used to curse it as we tried to lay out the cables, Frozen Yellow Snake.
> To attach a device to this 10Base5 physical media, you had to drill a small hole in the cable itself to place a "vampire tap."
> So-called Thinnet (10Base2) uses cable TV-style cable, RG-58A/U. This made it much easier to lay out network cable.
The neat thing about vampire taps is that you don't need to disconnect the cable so it could be done on a running bus topology network without interruption. If you did it right...
> The first Ethernet used 9.5-mm coaxial cable, also called ThickNet, or as we used to curse it as we tried to lay out the cables, Frozen Yellow Snake.
> To attach a device to this 10Base5 physical media, you had to drill a small hole in the cable itself to place a "vampire tap."
> So-called Thinnet (10Base2) uses cable TV-style cable, RG-58A/U. This made it much easier to lay out network cable.
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/the-birth-and-ri...