BROADCAST, MULTIPLE ACCESS

ETHERNET
Slides, their text and graphics are Based on textbook Conceptual Computer Networks by:
v 5.0 27th/April/2022
© 2013-2022 José María Foces Morán, José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved
 The scenario for Chapter 2
2

¨ Statistical multiplexing R1

Host S1

¤ Switching according to distribution of demand

across all connected nodes

S2 R2

¨ Directly connected nodes Switch 1 Switch 2

¤ Host – Switch
S3 R3

¤ Host – Host
ACTIVE FLOWS

Flow S3 - R2 number 1

¨ PDU of Ethernet is Frame Flow S3 - R2 number 2

Flow S3 - R3 number 1

Flow S2 - R3 number 1

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
2 Ethernet, intro

• A brief introduction to the original Ethernet, a

shared medium local network technology with
an access arbitration known as CSMA/CD

• Today the most prevalent form of Ethernet is

the switched Ethernet which we will take up in
chapter 3

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Ethernet
4

¨ Most successful local area networking technology

¨ Developed in the mid-1970s by researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto
Research Centers (PARC).

Original Ethernet drawing (© Bob Metcalfe)

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Ethernet (≈ IEEE 802.3)
5

¨ Based on ALOHA (A packet radio network)

¤ Developed at the University of Hawaii to support communication across the Hawaiian Islands
¤ For ALOHA, the medium was open space, for Ethernet the medium is a coaxial cable
¤ Today’s 802.11(WiFi) protocols are based on the ideas developed in the Aloha network
¨ DEC and Intel joined Xerox to define a 10-Mbps Ethernet standard in 1978
¨ Ethernet became the basis for IEEE standard 802.3 LAN technology

¨ More recently 802.3 has been extended:

¤ 100-Mbps
n Fast Ethernet
¤ 1000-Mbps
n Gigabit Ethernet
¤ 10G+

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Our Ethernet diagrams vs. Metcalf’s
6 Transceiver
Network Interface Card
NIC

Host computer 1

Other hosts Coaxial cable

NIC

Host 1
(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Ethernet
7

¨ An Ethernet segment is implemented on a coaxial cable

¨ Host connects to an Ethernet segment by means of a NIC (Network Interface
Card)
SHARED LINK Transceiver
coaxial cable

&
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or
s M ts
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8 s
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4 -2 F o c
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re

NIC NIC NIC NIC

Host computer 1 Host 2 Host 3 Host 3

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Ethernet
8

¨ NIC (Network Interface Adaptor) ¨ Transceiver (a small device directly attached to the
tap)
¤ Datalink protocol is implemented on
¤ Detects when the line is idle by applying
NIC Carrier Sense = CS
¤ NIC taps into the coaxial cable by ¤ Drives signal when the host is transmitting
means of a transceiver ¤ Receives incoming signal
¤ Connected to an Ethernet adaptor which is
plugged into the host.
Datalink layer
802.3 Media
Access Control
802.3 Media
Access Control ¤ Right after a bit is transmitted (Tx), its signal is
Physical Media
Independent Sublayers
Physical Media
Independent Sublayers
received (Rx) and checked for equality
NIC
Interface Interface n if (Tx != Rx){
Physical Media Physical Media
A collision took place;
Physical layer DEPENDENT Sublayers
PHY
DEPENDENT Sublayers
PHY
Do backoff;
Transceiver
Interface Interface
}
MDI MDI
Transmission Medium

NIC

Host 1
(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 CSMA/CD distributed access scheme
9

¨ CS: Carrier Sense

A computer can distinguish when the link is being used and when it is not (Idle)
¨ MA: Multiple Access
The link is shared among all the computers connected to it
¨ CD: Collision Detection
¤ As the transceiver transmits a frame, it also receives each of its bits
¤ In consequence, it can detect when one of its transmissions is colliding with another frame being transmitted by
another node
SHARED LINK Transceiver
coaxial cable

NIC NIC NIC NIC

Host computer 1 Host 2 Host 3 Host 3

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 IEEE 10-BASE-5
10

Multiple Ethernet segments can be joined together by using repeaters.

¨ A repeater is a device that forwards digital signals.
¨ No more than four repeaters may be positioned between any pair of
hosts.
¤ An Ethernet can have a max distance of only 2500 m, RTT = 51,2 µs

500 m max

Repeater Repeater Repeater Repeater

2500 m max
Rtt = 51,2 µs

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Ethernet
11

Any signal placed on the Ethernet by a host is inherently broadcast

over the entire cable (Network)
¤ Signal propagates in both directions
¤ Repeaters forward the signal on all outgoing segments
¨ Ethernet uses Manchester encoding scheme
Ethernet segment
Repeater

Ethernet frame
&
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Signal propagates to all segments/hosts s M ts
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F l r
Ethernet segment ía A l
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Ethernet segment re
R

Ethernet segment
R

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Access Protocol for Ethernet
12

¨ Access protocol is called Ethernet’s Media ¨ Frame format

Access Control (MAC) ¤ Preamble (64bit): allows the receiver to
¤ Remains CSMA/CD synchronize with the signal (sequence of
alternating 64 0s and 1s ending in 11)
¤ It is implemented in Hardware on the
network adaptor ¤ Host and Destination Address (48bit each)
¤ Packet type (16bit): acts as multiplexing key
to identify the higher level protocol
¤ Data (MTU is 1500)
n A frame must contain at least 46 bytes of
data (Padding if necessary)
n Frame must be long enough to allow collision
detection
¤ CRC (32bit)

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Ethernet Addresses
13

¨ Every Ethernet NIC in the world has a unique Ethernet Address.

¨ The address belongs to the NIC
¤ Usually kept in stable storage (NVRAM, Flash), EEPROM)

¨ Ethernet addresses are typically printed in a human readable format

¤ As a sequence of six hex numbers separated by colons
n Check out ifconfig command and the exercises in the PF_PACKET practices
¤ Each number corresponds to 1 byte of the 6 byte address and is given by a pair of
hexadecimal digits, one for each of the 4-bit nibbles in the byte
¤ Leading 0s are dropped
¤ For example, 8:0:2b:e4:b1:2 is
n 00001000 00000000 00101011 11100100 10110001 00000010

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Ethernet Addresses
14

¨ To ensure that every adaptor gets a unique address, each manufacturer

of Ethernet devices is allocated a different prefix that must be prepended
to the address on every adaptor they build
n AMD has been assigned the 24bit prefix 8:0:20
¨ Modern NICs and operating systems allow allocating several MAC
addresses to a single NIC

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Ethernet Addresses
15

¨ Each adaptor recognizes the frames addressed to its own address

¨ In addition to unicast addresses, an Ethernet address consisting of all 1s
is treated as a broadcast address.
¤ Adaptors pass frames addressed to its own MAC address or to the broadcast address
upward the host’s protocol stack
¨ Similarly, an address that has the first bit set to 1 but is not the broadcast
address is called a multicast address
¤ A given host can program its adaptor to accept some set of multicast addresses

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 Ethernet Addresses
16

¨ An Ethernet adaptor accepts:

¤ Frames addressed to its own MAC address
¤ Frames addressed to the broadcast MAC address
¤ Frames addressed to a multicast addressed if it has been instructed

¨ In addition, it is possible to set the NIC in a mode that accepts all the
incoming traffic regardless of its destination MAC
¤ The promiscuous mode

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
3 Other IEEE 802.3 Technologies

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 IEEE 802.3 technologies
18

¨ Instead of using the thick coax ¨ Network topology

cable, an Ethernet can be implemented by 10BASE5
constructed from a thinner cable:
and 10BASE2
¤ 10Base2 (Thinlan)
¤ The original was 10Base5
¤ Bus Topology
n 10 means the network operates
at 10 Mbps SHARED LINK Transceiver
coaxial cable
n Base means signals are pulses
(Baseband transmission), no &
án
modulation (Broadband), encoding M
or
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n 2 means that a given segment can be 8
sé a n
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no longer than 200 m (Thinlan) 4 -2 F o c
0 1 ría
) 2 M a d.
n 5 means that a given segment can be C
( sé v e
J o se r
re
no longer than 500 m (ThickLan) NIC NIC NIC NIC

Host computer 1 Host 2 Host 3 Host 3

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 More modern Ethernet technologies
19

¨ Another cable technology is 10Base-T ¨ Network topology in

T stands for twisted pair cable
10BASE-T is
¤

¤ Limited to 100 m in length

¤ Star Topology
¨ With 10Base-T, the common host

configuration is to have several point to

point segments coming out of a HUB host

multiway repeater, called Hub

STAR topology

UPLINK based on an optical fiber (OF) host

HUB 100BASE-T

¤ Concentrator or
án
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¤ 10 Mbps M
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¤ Baseband transmission -
1 4 ía
18 es
20 Foc
20 ar
S1b HUB 100BASE-T
) .
T = Twisted pair cables (C sé M v e d
S1b

¤ J o se r
re LINK based on a Twisted pair cable (TP)

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
 10-BASE-T Hubs extending an Ethernet with
10BASE-FL (Fiber optic link)
20

host

HUB host

STAR topology

UPLINK based on an optical fiber (OF) host

HUB 100BASE-T
10BASE-FL (Fiber link)
2000 m max length
&
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M s
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S1br HUB 100BASE-T
S1b

LINK based on a Twisted pair cable (TP)

(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.
(C) 2014-2022 José María Foces Morán & José María Foces Vivancos. All rights reserved.