Chapter 13

Wired LANs: Ethernet

13.1
  local area network (LAN) is a computer network
that is designed for a limited geographic area such
as a building or a campus
 The LAN market has seen several technologies such
as Ethernet, Token Ring, Token Bus, FDDI, and
ATM LAN
 Ethernet is by far the dominant technology.
 IEEE Standard Project 802, designed to regulate the
manufacturing and interconnectivity between
different LANs

13.2
 13-1 IEEE STANDARDS

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.

Topics discussed in this section:

Data Link Layer
Physical Layer

13.3
  The standard was adopted by the
American National Standards Institute
(ANSI)

 In1987, the International Organization

for Standardization (ISO) also approved
it as an international standard under the
designation ISO 8802.

13.4
 Figure 13.1 IEEE standard for LANs

13.5
  In IEEE Project 802, flow control, error control,and
part of the framing duties are collected into one
sublayer called the logical link control

• Framing is handled in both the LLC sublayer

and the MAC sublayer

• The LLC provides one single data link control

protocol for all IEEE LANs single LLC protocol
can provide interconnectivity between different
LANs because it makes the MAC sublayer
transparent

13.6
 • Framing LLC defines a protocol data unit (PDU) that
is somewhat similar to that of HDLC.
• The header contains a control field like the one in
HDLC; this field is used for flow and error control.
• The two other header fields define the upper-layer
protocol at the source and destination that uses LLC.
These fields are called the destination service access
point (DSAP) and the source service access point
(SSAP).
• frame defined in HDLC is divided into a PDU at the
LLC sublayer and a frame at the MAC sublayer
• The purpose of the LLC is to provide flow and error
control for the upper-layer protocols

13.7
 Figure 13.2 HDLC frame compared with LLC and MAC frames

13.8
 • IEEE Project 802 has created a sublayer
called media access control that defines
the specific access method for each LAN

• In contrast to the LLC sublayer, the

MAC sublayer contains a number of
distinct modules; each defines the access
method and the framing format specific
to the corresponding LAN protocol.
Physical

13.9
 Physical Layer
•The physical layer is dependent on the implementation and
type of physical media used.
•IEEE defines detailed specifications for each LAN
implementation. For example, although there is only one
MAC sublayer for Standard Ethernet, there is a different
physical layer specifications for each Ethernet
implementations

13.10
 13-2 STANDARD ETHERNET

The original Ethernet was created in 1976 at Xerox’s

Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Since then, it has
gone through four generations. We briefly discuss the
Standard (or traditional) Ethernet in this section.

Topics discussed in this section:

MAC Sublayer
Physical Layer

13.11
 Figure 13.3 Ethernet evolution through four generations

13.12
 Figure 13.4 802.3 MAC frame

13.13
 Figure 13.5 Minimum and maximum lengths

13.14
 • Ethernet does not provide any mechanism for acknowledging received
frames, making it what is known as an unreliable medium

• Preamble:
7 bytes (56 bits), of alternating 0s and 1s that alerts the receiving system to the
coming frame and enables it to synchronize its input timing
 pattern provides only an alert and a timing pulse
 The preamble is actually added at the physical layer and is not (formally)
part of the frame

• Start frame delimiter (SFD):

The SFD warns the station or stations that this is the last chance for
synchronization. The last 2 bits is 11 and alerts the receiver that the next
field is the destination address.

• Destination address (DA):

The DA field is 6 bytes and contains the physical address of the destination
station or stations to receive the packet

13.15
 • Source address (SA).
The SA field is also 6 bytes and contains the physical address of
the sender of the packet
• Length or type:
This field is defined as a type field or length field. The original
Ethernet used this field as the type field to define the upper-layer
protocol using the MAC frame.
• Data.
This field carries data encapsulated from the upper-layer
protocols. It is a minimum of 46 and a maximum of 1500
bytes
• CRC.
The last field contains error detection information, in this case a
CRC-32

13.16
 Note

Frame length:
Minimum: 64 bytes (512 bits)
Maximum: 1518 bytes (12,144 bits)

13.17
 • Each station on an Ethernet network (such as a PC,
workstation, or printer) has its own network interface card
(NIC)
• The NIC fits inside the station and provides the station with
a 6-byte physical address
• Ethernet address is 6 bytes(48 bits), written in hexadecimal
notation, with a colon between the bytes
• Unicast, Multicast, and Broadcast Addresses
 Unicast: defines only one recipient, one to one, indicated by 0
 Multicast: defines a group of addresses; one to many indicated
by 1

13.18
 Figure 13.6 Example of an Ethernet address in hexadecimal notation

13.19
 Figure 13.7 Unicast and multicast addresses

13.20
 Note

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.

13.21
 Note

The broadcast destination address is a

special case of the multicast address in
which all bits are 1s.

13.22
 Example 13.1

Define the type of the following destination addresses:

a. 4A:30:10:21:10:1A b. 47:20:1B:2E:08:EE
c. FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
Solution
To find the type of the address, we need to look at the
second hexadecimal digit from the left. If it is even, the
address is unicast. If it is odd, the address is multicast. If
all digits are F’s, the address is broadcast. Therefore, we
have the following:
a. This is a unicast address because A in binary is 1010.
b. This is a multicast address because 7 in binary is 0111.
c. This is a broadcast address because all digits are F’s.
13.23
 Figure 13.8 Categories of Standard Ethernet

13.24
 Figure 13.9 Encoding in a Standard Ethernet implementation

13.25
 Figure 13.10 10Base5 implementation

13.26
 lOBase5: Thick Ethernet
• 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 5OO-meter, can be connected using repeaters

13.27
 Figure 13.11 10Base2 implementation

13.28
 10Base2: Thin Ethernet

• 1OBase2 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 10BaseS 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
• length of each segment cannot exceed 185 m (close to 200 m) due to
the high level of attenuation in thin coaxial cable.
13.29
 Figure 13.12 10Base-T implementation

13.30
 1OBase-T: Twisted-Pair Ethernet

• 1OBase-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
• Hub replaces the coaxial
• The maximum length of the twisted cable here
is defined as 100 m, to minimize the effect of attenuation
in the twisted cable
13.31
 Figure 13.13 10Base-F implementation

13.32
 lOBase-F: Fiber Ethernet
• lO-Mbps Ethernet, the most common is
called 10Base-F
• lOBase-F uses a star topology to connect stations to a
hub.
• The stations are connected to the hub using two fiber-
optic cables

13.33
 Table 13.1 Summary of Standard Ethernet implementations

13.34
 13-3 CHANGES IN THE STANDARD

The 10-Mbps Standard Ethernet has gone through

several changes before moving to the higher data
rates. These changes actually opened the road to the
evolution of the Ethernet to become compatible with
other high-data-rate LANs.

Topics discussed in this section:

Bridged Ethernet
Switched Ethernet
Full-Duplex Ethernet

13.35
 Figure 13.14 Sharing bandwidth

13.36
 • They raise the bandwidth and they separate
collision domains
Raising the Bandwidth:
In an unbridged Ethernet network, the total capacity (10 Mbps) is shared among all stations
with a frame to send; the stations share the bandwidth of the network

If only one station has frames to send, it benefits from the total capacity (10 Mbps)

But if more than one station needs to use the network, the capacity is shared

If two stations have a lot of frames to send, they probably alternate in usage. When one station
is sending, the other one refrains from sending.

Bridge divides the network into two or more networks. Bandwidth-wise, each network is
Independent

13.37
 Figure 13.15 A network with and without a bridge

13.38
 Figure 13.16 Collision domains in an unbridged network and a bridged network

13.39
 Separating Collision Domains
• Another advantage of a bridge is the separation of the collision domain

• collision domain becomes much smaller and the probability of collision is

reduced tremendously.

• Without bridging, 12 stations contend for access to the medium; with

bridging only 3 stations contend for access to the medium.

13.40
 Figure 13.17 Switched Ethernet

13.41
Switched Ethernet
• Instead of having two to four networks, why not have N networks, where N
is the number of stations on the LAN
• Bandwidth is shared only between the station and the switch
• In addition, 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

13.42
 Figure 13.18 Full-duplex switched Ethernet

13.43
 Full-Duplex Ethernet

• One of the limitations of 10Base5 and lOBase2 is that communication is half-duplex

• The next step in the evolution was to move from switched Ethernet to

full-duplex switched Ethernet

• The full-duplex mode increases the capacity of each domain from 10 to 20 Mbps.
• Instead of using one link between the station and the switch, the configuration
uses two links: one to transmit and one to receive.
• No Need for CSMAICD as it is consisting of dedicated point to point connection
• There is no explicit flow control or error control to inform the sender that the frame
has arrived at the destination without error.

13.44
 13-4 FAST ETHERNET

Fast Ethernet was designed to compete with LAN

protocols such as FDDI or Fiber Channel. IEEE
created Fast Ethernet under the name 802.3u. Fast
Ethernet is backward-compatible with Standard
Ethernet, but it can transmit data 10 times faster at a
rate of 100 Mbps.

Topics discussed in this section:

MAC Sublayer
Physical Layer

13.45
 Goals:

1. Upgrade the data rate to 100 Mbps.

2. Make it compatible with Standard
Ethernet.
3. Keep the same 48-bit address.
4. Keep the same frame format.
5. Keep the same minimum and maximum
frame lengths.
 MAC Sublayer:

• A decision was made to drop the bus topologies

and keep only the star topology.
• For the star topology:
 In the half-duplex approach, the stations are
connected via a hub
 In the full-duplex approach, the connection is
made via a switch with buffers at each port.

13.47
 Autonegotiation:

•It allows two devices to negotiate the mode or data rate of operation

To allow incompatible devices to connect to one another. For example, a

device with a maximum capacity of 10 Mbps can communicate with a device
with a 100 Mbps capacity (but can work at a lower rate).
To allow one device to have multiple capabilities.
 To allow a station to check a hub's capabilities

13.48
 Topology
•Fast Ethernet is designed to connect two or more stations together

•If there are only two stations, they can be connected point-to-

point.

•Three or more stations need to be connected in a star

topology with a hub or a switch at the center,

13.49
 Figure 13.19 Fast Ethernet topology

13.50
 Figure 13.20 Fast Ethernet implementations

13.51
 Figure 13.21 Encoding for Fast Ethernet implementation

13.52
 Encoding
• Manchester encoding needs a 200-Mbaud bandwidth for a data rate of
100 Mbps, which makes it unsuitable for a medium such as twisted-pair
cable
Ethernet designers sought some alternative encoding/decoding
scheme

lOOBase-TX
• Uses two pairs of twisted-pair cable(either category 5 UTP or STP).
• MLT-3 scheme was selected since it has 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 Os and Is
• This creates a data rate of 125 Mbps, which is fed into MLT-3 for
encoding.

13.53
 lOOBase-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 NRZ-I has a bit synchronization problem for long

sequences of Os (or Is, based on the encoding)

• To overcome this problem, the designers used 4B/5B block encoding as we
described for IOOBase-TX

• The block encoding increases the bit rate from 100 to 125 Mbps, which
can easily be handled by fiber-optic cable

13.54
 • 1OOBase-TX network can provide a data rate of 100 Mbps, but it
requires the use of category 5 UTP or STP cable

100Base-T4
• 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
• We need to use 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) x 100 Mbps, or 75 Mbaud.

13.55
 Table 13.2 Summary of Fast Ethernet implementations

13.56
 13-5 GIGABIT ETHERNET

The need for an even higher data rate resulted in the

design of the Gigabit Ethernet protocol (1000 Mbps).
The IEEE committee calls the standard 802.3z.

Topics discussed in this section:

MAC Sublayer
Physical Layer
Ten-Gigabit Ethernet

13.57
 Goals:

1. Upgrade the data rate to 1 Gbps.

2. Make it compatible with Standard or Fast
Ethernet.
3. Use the same 48-bit address.
4. Use the same frame format.
5. Keep the same minimum and maximum
frame lengths.
6. To support autonegotiation as defined in Fast
Ethernet.

13.58
 MAC sublayer:

1. Full duplex:
• central switch connected to all computers
• each switch has buffers for each input port, in which data are
• stored until they are transmitted
• There is no collision in this mode

2.Half duplex
• In this case, a switch can be replaced by a hub, which acts as the common cable in
which a collision might occur
• The half-duplex approach uses CSMAlCD
• Maximum length of the network in this approach is totally dependent on the minimum
frame size.
• Consist of traditional approach, carrier extension and frame bursting
 Note

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.

13.60
 Figure 13.22 Topologies of Gigabit Ethernet

13.61
 Figure 13.23 Gigabit Ethernet implementations

13.62
 Figure 13.24 Encoding in Gigabit Ethernet implementations

13.63
 Table 13.3 Summary of Gigabit Ethernet implementations

13.64
 10 Gigabit
13-5 10 GIGABIT Ethernet
ETHERNET

The IEEE committee created Ten-Gigabit

Ethernet and called it Standard 802.3ae

Goals:
1. Upgrade the data rate to 10 Gbps.
2. Make it compatible with Standard, Fast, and Gigabit Ethernet.
3. Use the same 48-bit address.
4.Use the same frame format.
5. Keep the same minimum and maximum frame lengths.
6. Allow the interconnection of existing LANs into a metropolitan area network
(MAN)or a wide area network (WAN).
7. Make Ethernet compatible with technologies such as Frame Relay and ATM
 Table 13.4 Summary of Ten-Gigabit Ethernet implementations

13.66