CCNA – Semester1

Module 6
Ethernet Fundamentals

Objectives

• Ethernet fundamentals
• Ethernet operation
 Ethernet Fundamentals

Introduction to Ethernet

• The success of Ethernet is due to the

following factors:
– Simplicity and ease of maintenance
– Ability to incorporate new technologies
– Reliability
– Low cost of installation and upgrade
– Bandwidth can be increased without changing
underlying technology
IEEE 802 Committees
802.0 SEC
802.1 High Level Interface (HILI)
802.2 Logical Link Control (LLC)
IEEE 802.3 - 10 Mbit
802.3 CSMA/CD Working Group
IEEE 802.3u - 100 Mbit
802.4 Token Bus
IEEE 802.3z - 1000 Mbit
802.5 Token Ring
802.6 Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)
802.7 BroadBand Technical Adv. Group (BBTAG)
802.8 Fiber Optics Technical Adv. Group (FOTAG)
802.9 Integrated Services LAN (ISLAN)
802.10 Standard for Interoperable LAN Security (SILS)

801.11 Wireless LAN (WLAN)

802.12 Demand Priority
802.14 Cable-TV Based Broadband Communication
Network
802.15 Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN)
802.16 Broadband Wireless Access (BBWA)
RPRSG Resilient Packet Ring Study Group (RPRSG)

Ethernet Standards
Ethernet Specifications
Designation Description
10 Mbps baseband Ethernet over coaxial cable with a maximum distance of 185 meters.
10Base-2
Also referred to as Thin Ethernet or Thinnet or Thinwire.
10 Mbps baseband Ethernet over coaxial cable with a maximum distance of 500 meters.
10Base-5
Also referred to as Thick Ethernet or Thicknet or Thickwire.
10 Mbps baseband Ethernet over twisted pair cables with a maximum length of 100
10Base-T
meters.
100Base-FX 100 Mbps baseband Ethernet over two multimode optical fibers.
100Base-T 100 Mbps baseband Ethernet over twisted pair cable.
100 Mbps baseband Ethernet over four pairs of Category 3 or higher unshielded
100Base-T4
twisted pair cable.
100 Mbps baseband Ethernet over two pairs of shielded twisted pair or Category 4
100Base-TX
twisted pair cable.

1000Base-CX 1000 Mbps baseband Ethernet over two pairs of 150 shielded twisted pair cable.

1000 Mbps baseband Ethernet over two multimode or single-mode optical fibers using
1000Base-LX
longwave laser optics.
1000 Mbps baseband Ethernet over two multimode optical fibers using shortwave laser
1000Base-SX
optics.
1000 Mbps baseband Ethernet over four pairs of Category 5 unshielded twisted pair
1000Base-T
cable.

Ethernet and the OSI model

• Divided OSI Layer 2 into two sublayers

– Media Access Control (MAC) – Traditional L2 features
• Transitions down to media
– Logical link control (LLC) – New L2 features
• Transitions up to the network layer
LLC sublayer
Packet

Packet LLC PDU

Packet Frame

• LLC PDU includes:

– DSAP: Destination service access point
– SSAP: Source service access point
• Supports connection control methods specified by upper
protocols

MAC sublayer
Packet

Packet
802.3 802.5

Packet Packet

• Naming.
• Framing.
• Media access control rules.
MAC address

• MAC addresses are burned into read-only

memory (ROM) and are copied into
random-access memory (RAM) when the
NIC initializes.
• Presentation formats: 0000.0c12.3456 or
00-00-0c-12-34-56.
• Broadcast address: FFFF.FFFF.FFFF

Layer 2 Framing
• Framing helps obtain essential
information that could not,
otherwise, be obtained with
coded bit streams alone.
Examples of such information
are:
– Which computers are
communicating with one another
– When communication between
individual computers begins and
when it terminates
– Provides a method for detection
of errors that occurred during the
communication
– Whose turn it is to "talk" in a
computer "conversation“
Generic Frame Format

• Framing is the Layer 2 encapsulation process. A

frame is the Layer 2 protocol data unit.

Ethernet Frame Format

• At the data link layer the frame structure is nearly identical for all
speeds of Ethernet from 10 Mbps to 10,000 Mbps.
• Ethernet requires that the frame be not less than 46 octets or more
than 1518 octets.
IEEE 802.3 Ethernet

Ethernet II
 Ethernet Operation

Media Access Control (MAC)

• MAC refers to protocols that determine

which computer on a shared-medium
environment, or collision domain, is allowed
to transmit the data.
• There are two broad categories of Media
Access Control, deterministic (taking turns)
and non-deterministic (first come, first
served).
Media Access Control (MAC) Protocols
• Ethernet (IEEE 802.3)
– Logical bus topology
– Physical star or extended star
– Nondeterministic
• First-come, first-served
• Token Ring (IEEE 802.5)
– Logical ring
– Physical star topology
– Deterministic
• Token controls traffic
– Older declining technology
• FDDI (IEEE 802.5)
– Logical ring topology
– Physical dual-ring topology
– Deterministic
• Token controls traffic
– Near-end-of-life technology

CSMA/CD Process
Host wants
to transmit

Attempts> Too many

Broadcast attempts =
too many? collisions; abort
jam signal attempts + 1
Is carrier transmission
sensed?

Assemble Algorithm
Wait for calculate
frame t seconds backoff

Is Is
Start a collision Keep transmission Transmission
transmitting detected? transmitting done? completed
Ethernet Transmission Mode

• Full duplex :
– send and receive simultaneously
– no collisions occur.
• Half duplex:
– only send or receive at a specific moment
– transmit 64 bits of timing synchronization information that is known as
the preamble to make sure collision do not occur.

Ethernet Timing

• For CSMA/CD Ethernet to operate, collision must be

sensed before completing transmission of a
minimum-sized frame.
• At 100 Mbps the system timing is barely able to
accommodate 100 meter cables. For this reason half
duplex is not permitted in 10-Gigabit Ethernet.
Slot time
• Ethernet standard
specifications limit
– maximum segment length
– maximum number of stations
per segment
– maximum number of repeaters
between segments
• Slot time >= round trip delay

Interframe Spacing

• The minimum time space between two non-colliding

frames is also called the interframe spacing.
• After a frame has been sent, all stations on a 10-Mbps
Ethernet are required to wait a minimum of 96 bit-times
(9.6 microseconds) before any station may legally
transmit the next frame.
Error Handling

• Collisions are to resole contention for

network access which results in network
bandwidth loss.
• When collision occurs, the devices with data
to transmit return to a listen-before-transmit
mode and no device have priority to transmit
data.

Types of Collisions

• The results of collisions, collision fragments, are

partial or corrupted frames that are less than 64
octets and have an invalid FCS. Three types of
collisions are:
– Local
– Remote
– Late
Local Collision

• Local collision is detected on the local segment

when a station detects a signal on the RX pair at
the same time it is sending on the TX pair.
• Local collision is sensed as over-voltage
condition on the local cable area when two
signal from different stations collide.

Remote Collison

• The characteristics of a remote collision are a

frame that is less than the minimum length, has
an invalid FCS checksum.
• This sort of collision usually results from
collisions occurring on the far side of a repeated
connection.
Late Collision

• Collisions occurring after the first 64 octets are

called late collisions.
• Difference between late collisions and other
collisions is that the Ethernet NIC will not
automatically retransmit a frame that was
collided late.

FCS and Beyond

• A received frame that has a bad frame check sequence, also

referred to as a checksum or CRC error, differs from the original
transmission by at least 1 bit.
• High numbers of FCS errors from a single station usually indicates
a faulty NIC and/or faulty or corrupted software drivers, or a bad
cable connecting that station to the network.
• If FCS errors are associated with many stations, they are generally
traceable to bad cabling, a faulty version of the NIC driver, a faulty
hub port, or induced noise in the cable system.
Ethernet Autonegotiation

• This process defines how two link partners may

automatically negotiate a configuration offering the best
common performance level.
• It has the additional advantage of only involving the
lowest part of the physical layer.

Summary

• The basics of Ethernet technology

• How Ethernet and the OSI model interact
• Ethernet frame field names and purposes
• The characteristics and function of CSMA/CD
• Ethernet timing
• The backoff algorithm and time after a collision
• Ethernet errors and collisions
• Auto-negotiation in relation to speed and duplex