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Wired LANs: Ethernet

ARUNA R | MODULE – 2
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1.Ethernet
2.Standard Ethernet
3.Fast Ethernet
4.Gigabit Ethernet
IEEE Standards 3
• In 1985, the Computer Society of the IEEE started a project, called Project 802, to set standards
to enable intercommunication among equipment from a variety of manufacturers. Project 802 is
a way of specifying functions of the physical layer and the data link layer of major LAN
protocols.
Logical Link Control (LLC) 4
• Framing: LLC defines a protocol data unit (PDU) that is similar to that of HDLC
• To provide flow and error control for the upper-layer protocols that actually demand these
services
Standard Ethernet 5
• The original Ethernet was created in 1976 at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).
Since then, it has gone through four generations
MAC Sublayer 6

• Preamble: alerting the receiving system to the coming frame and enabling it to synchronize its
input timing
• CRC: CRC-32
Addressing 7
• Ethernet address in hexadecimal notation

• The least significant bit of the first byte defines the type of address.
If the bit is 0, the address is unicast; otherwise, it is multicast
• The broadcast destination address is a special case of the multicast address in
which all bits are 1s
 Transmission of Address Bits 8

47:20:1B:2E:08:EE
The address is sent left to right, byte by byte; for each byte, it is
sent right to left, bit by bit, as shown below:
Access Method 9

speed of propagation
in a cable is 2 x 108m
Ethernet 10
• Access method: 1-persistent CSMA/CD
• Slot time = rount-trip time + time required to send the jam sequence
– 512 bits for Ethernet, 51.2 μs for 10 Mbps Ethernet

• Slot time and collision

• Slot time and maximum network length
• MaxLength = PropagationSpeed x (SlotTime/2)
• MaxLength = (2 x 108m) x (51.2 x 10-6/2) = 5120 m
• MaxLength = 2500m 48 % of the theoretical calculation by considering
delay times in repeaters and interfaces, and the time required to send
the jam sequence
 Efficiency of Standard Ethernet 11

The efficiency of the Ethernet is defined as the ratio of the time used by a station to
send data to the time the medium is occupied by this station.

The practical efficiency of standard Ethernet has been measured to be

Efficiency = 1 / (1 + 6.4 * a)

Where “a” is the number of frames that can fit on the medium.
It can be calculated as
a = (propagation delay)/(transmission delay)
Example 12
In the Standard Ethernet with the transmission rate of 10 Mbps, we assume that the
length of the medium is 2500 m and the size of the frame is 512 bits. The propagation
speed of a signal in a cable is normally 2 x 108 m/s.

The example shows that a = 0.24, which means only 0.24 of a frame occupies the whole
medium in this case. The efficiency is 39 percent, which is considered moderate; it
means that only 61 percent of the time the medium is occupied but not used by a
station.
Physical Layer: Ethernet Implementation 13
 Summary of Standard Ethernet 14

10BaseX,
The number 10 - 10 Mbps,
Base means baseband (digital) signal, and
X - maximum size of the cable in 100 meters (for example 5 for 500 or 2 for 185 m
T - unshielded twisted pair cable (UTP) and
F - Fiber-optic.
 Encoding & Decoding 15

Manchester encoding is self-synchronous, providing a transition at each bit interval.

10Base5: Thick Ethernet 16
 17
 The first implementation is called 10Base5, thick Ethernet, or Thicknet.
 10Base5 was the first Ethernet specification to use a bus topology with an external
transceiver (transmitter/receiver) connected via a tap to a thick coaxial cable.
 The transceiver is responsible for transmitting, receiving, and detecting collisions.
 The transceiver is connected to the station via a transceiver cable that provides
separate paths for sending and receiving.
 The maximum length of the coaxial cable must not exceed 500 m, otherwise, there is
excessive degradation of the signal.
 If a length of more than 500 m is needed, up to five segments, each a maximum of
500-meter, can be connected using repeaters.
10Base2: Thin Ethernet 18
 19
• The second implementation is called 10Base2, thin Ethernet, or Cheapernet.
• 10Base2 also uses a bus topology, but the cable is much thinner and more flexible.
• The cable can be bent to pass very close to the stations.
• In this case, the transceiver is normally part of the network interface card (NIC),
which is installed inside the station.
• Collision here occurs in the thin coaxial cable.
• This implementation is more cost effective than 10Base5 because thin coaxial cable
is less expensive than thick coaxial and the tee connections are much cheaper than
taps.
• Installation is simpler because the thin coaxial cable is very flexible.
• However, the length of each segment cannot exceed 185 m (close to 200 m) due to
the high level of attenuation in thin coaxial cable.
10BaseT: Twisted-Pair Ethernet 20
 21
• The third implementation is called 10Base-T or twisted-pair Ethernet.
• 10Base-T uses a physical star topology.
• The stations are connected to a hub via two pairs of twisted cable,
• Two pairs of twisted cable create two paths (one for sending and one for
receiving) between the station and the hub.
• Any collision here happens in the hub.
• Compared to 10Base5 or 10Base2, the hub actually replaces the coaxial cable as
far as a collision is concerned.
• The maximum length of the twisted cable here is defined as 100 m, to minimize
the effect of attenuation in the twisted cable.
 10Base-F: Fiber Ethernet 22

• There are several types of optical fiber 10-Mbps Ethernet; the most common is
called 10Base-F.
• 10Base-F uses a star topology to connect stations to a hub.
• The stations are connected to the hub using two fiber-optic cables.
Changes in the Standard 23

• Bridged Ethernet: Raising bandwidth and separating collision domains

Separating Collision Domains 24
Switched Ethernet 25
• The idea of a bridged LAN can be
Switched Ethernet: N-port bridge extended to a switched LAN. For
multiple-port bridge
• The bandwidth is shared only
between the station and the switch
(5 Mbps each), the collision domain
is divided into N domains.
• A layer 2 switch is an N-port bridge
with additional sophistication that
allows faster handling of the
packets.
• Evolution from a bridged Ethernet to
a switched Ethernet was a big step
that opened the way to an even
faster Ethernet.
 Full-Duplex Ethernet: (10Base-T is always full-duplex) 26

Full-duplex (switched) Ethernet: no need for CSMA/CD

 A station can either send
or receive, but may not do
both at the same time.
 The evolution was to
move from switched
Ethernet to full-duplex
switched Ethernet mode
is to increases the
capacity of each domain
from 10 to 20 Mbps as
well dual communication.
 Fast Ethernet (100Mbps) 27
• Under the name of IEEE 802.3u
Goals of Fast Ethernet
• Upgrade the data rate to 100 Mbps
• Make it compatible with Standard Ethernet
• Keep the same 48-bit address and the same frame format
• Keep the same min. and max. frame length
MAC Sublayer
• CSMA/CD for the half-duplex approach
• No need for CSMA/CD for full-duplex Fast Ethernet

Autonegotiation: allow two devices to negotiate the mode or data rate of operation
To allow incompatible devices to connect to one another.
To allow one device to have multiple capabilities.
To allow a station to check a hub’s capabilities.
Fast Ethernet: Physical Layer 28

• Topology

• Implementation
 Fast Ethernet: Encoding 29
Multi Line Transmission, three-level (MLT-3) encoding
100Base-TX:
100Base-TX uses two pairs of twisted-pair
cable (either category 5 UTP or STP).
• MLT-3 scheme was selected for its good
bandwidth performance.
• MLT-3 is not a self-synchronous line
coding scheme, 4B/5B block coding is
used to provide bit synchronization by
preventing the occurrence of a long
sequence of 0s and 1s.
• This creates a data rate of 125 Mbps,
which is fed into MLT-3 for encoding.
unshielded twisted-pair (UTP)
 Fast Ethernet: Encoding 30

100Base-FX:
 100Base-FX uses two pairs of fiber-
optic cables.
 Optical fiber can easily handle high
bandwidth requirements by using
simple encoding schemes. The
designers of 100Base-FX selected
the NRZ-I encoding scheme for this
implementation.
 The block encoding increases the
bit rate from 100 to 125 Mbps,
which can easily be handled by
fiber-optic cable.
 Fast Ethernet: Encoding 31
100Base-T4:
 A new standard, called 100Base-T4, was designed to use category 3
or higher UTP.
 The implementation uses four pairs of UTP for transmitting 100
Mbps.
 Encoding/decoding in 100Base-T4 is more complicated.
 As this implementation uses category 3 UTP, each twisted-pair
cannot easily handle more than 25 Mbaud.
 In this design, one pair switches between sending and receiving.
 Three pairs of UTP category 3, however, can handle only 75 Mbaud
(25 Mbaud) each.
 An encoding scheme that converts 100 Mbps to a 75 Mbaud signal.
 In 8B/6T, eight data elements are encoded as six signal elements.
 This means that 100 Mbps uses only (6/8) × 100 Mbps, or 75 Mbaud.
Summary of Fast Ethernet 32
Gigabit Ethernet 33

• Under the name of IEEE 802.3z

• Upgrade the data rate to 1 Gbps
• Make it compatible with Standard or Fast Ethernet
• Keep the same 48-bit address and the same frame format
• Keep the same min. and max. frame length
• Support autonegotiation as defined in Fast Ethernet

MAC Sublayer
Most of all implementations follows full-duplex approach
• In the full-duplex mode of Gigabit Ethernet, there is no collision; the maximum length of
the cable is determined by the signal attenuation in the cable.
Half-duplex mode (very rare)
• Traditional: 0.512 μs (25m)
• Carrier Extension: 512 bytes (4096 bits) min. length
• Frame bursting to improve the inefficiency of carrier extension.
Gigabit Ethernet: Physical Layer 34

Topology
Gigabit Ethernet: Physical Layer 35

Implementation
 Gigabit Ethernet: Encoding 36

Two-wire implementation:
• The two-wire implementations use an
NRZ scheme, but NRZ does not self-
synchronize properly. To synchronize
bits, particularly at this high data rate,
8B/10B block encoding is used.
• This block encoding prevents long
sequences of 0s or 1s in the stream, but
the resulting stream is 1.25 Gbps.
• In this implementation, one wire (fiber
or STP) is used for sending and one for
receiving.
 Gigabit Ethernet: Encoding 37

Four-wire implementation:
 In the four-wire implementation it is
not possible to have 2 wires for input
and 2 for output, because each wire
would need to carry 500 Mbps, which
exceeds the capacity for category 5 UTP.
 4D-PAM5 encoding is used to reduce
the bandwidth.
 All four wires are involved in both input
and output; each wire carries 250 Mbps,
which is in the range for category 5 UTP
cable.
Gigabit Ethernet: Summary 38
 Ten-Gigabit Ethernet
The IEEE committee created Ten-Gigabit Ethernet and called it Standard 802.3ae. 39
The goals of the Ten-Gigabit Ethernet design can be summarized as follows:
• Upgrade the data rate to 10 Gbps.
• Make it compatible with Standard, Fast, and Gigabit Ethernet.
• Use the same 48-bit address.
• Use the same frame format.
• Keep the same minimum and maximum frame lengths.
• Allow the interconnection of existing LANs into a metropolitan area network (MAN) or a wide area
network (WAN).
• Make Ethernet compatible with technologies such as Frame Relay and ATM.
MAC Sublayer
Ten-Gigabit Ethernet operates only in full duplex mode.
Physical Layer
• The physical layer in Ten-Gigabit Ethernet is designed for using fiber-optic cable over long
distances.
• Three implementations are the most common: 10GBase-S, 10GBase-L, and 10GBase-E.
Ten-Gigabit Ethernet : Summary 40