ethernet
To start us out, I first want to point out that network architecture is something that
came about one day when someone sat down and said, "We are going to design a
network architecture; let's use CAT 3 cabling, a star topology, and CSMA/CD as an
access method. Oh, and let's call this architecture 10BaseT!"
In this example, 10BaseT was the name assigned to the architecture because
10 Mbps is the transfer rate of the network,
baseband communication is the technique used
to transmit the signal, and the T means our cable
type—in this case twisted-pair. Now, we have
IEEE 802.3 standard.
Ethernet is defined as the discussed different types of twisted-pair cabling,
but CAT 3 is the one that runs at 10 Mbps, so it
is the cable used in 10BaseT. The first types of network architecture to look at are the different Ethernet
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architectures. When designing networks, one of the first decisions we usually make is
"Do we want to use Ethernet or the competing network architecture called Token
Ring? Oh, we want to use Ethernet. What flavor of Ethernet?" This section will
help you understand what the different flavors of Ethernet are.