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Understanding Ethernet Standards
Understanding Ethernet Standards Article covers the following CCNA/ICND1 Exam Topics:
Under Operation of IP Data Networks:
1. Recognize the purpose and functions of various network devices such as Routers, Switches, Bridges, and Hubs.
2. Select the components required to meet a given network specification.
3. Predict the data flow between two hosts across a network.
4. Identify the appropriate media, cables, ports, and connectors to connect Cisco network devices to other network
devices and hosts in a LAN.
Recommended Study Plan:
1. Download the ICND1v2 Exam Topics Sheet from Cisco Website.
2. Follow the Steps and the Articles under IP Networks Fundamentals by order.
Average Time Required Studying this Article: 1 Hour
The Ethernet Standards
Defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the standard defines Cabling, Connections on
the ends of the cables, data-link protocol that rules and control, and all the pieces that are required to create an
Ethernet Frame. The Standards do not distinguish between Ethernet LAN and Ethernet as WAN connection.
Ethernet Physical Layer Standards
Plugging Ethernet-standards together and you will get Local Area Network (LAN) that is combination of user devices,
LAN switches, and different kinds of cabling. In Ethernet LAN Network, all network devices such PC, switch, and
router work together to deliver Ethernet frames from the one device on the LAN to some other device on the same
LAN or different LAN.
Ethernet has consistent properties over all type of media using the Ethernet Data Link Layer. No matter whether the
data flows over a UTP Copper Cable, Fiber Optic strand, or over a Radiowave, and no matter what the speed is:
Ethernet Data Link Header and Trailer use the same format.
Logically Speaking: Ethernet Data-link Layer 2 Protocols focus on how to send an Ethernet Frame from hop-to-hop
using source to destination MAC addresses.
Physically Speaking: layer 1 standards focus on how to convert bits over a cable.
Transmitting Data Using Twisted pairs
The wires inside the Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) are twisted together in parallel. The twisting helps solve some
important physical transmission issues. When electrical current passes over any wire, it creates electromagnetic
interference (EMI) that interferes with the electrical signals in nearby wires, including the wires in the same cable.
(EMI between wire pairs in the same cable is called crosstalk.)
So twisting the wire pairs together at the factory, helps cancel out most EMI that surround the UTP cable when it runs
beside electrical equipments and cancel out crosstalk that comes from another neighbor pair inside the UTP cable
itself. Most networking physical links that use copper wires used Unshielded Twisted Pair UTP cables.
The 10BASE-T and 100BASE-T standards require ONLY two pairs of wires one for each direction if Full-Duplex
desired, while 1000BASE-T standard requires 4 pairs, two for each direction and the default is Full-Duplex. (Half-
Duplex is not an Option with 1 Gig Ethernet)
Straight Through Cable pinouts
To understand the wiring of UTP cable pin positions on both ends of the cable you need to first understand how the
PCs Network Interface Card (NIC) and switchs interface port work in terms of pins position, that is Transmitter (TX)
and Receiver (RX). As a rule, Ethernet PCs NIC transmitter uses the pair connected to pins 1 and 2 to Listen or
Receive; the Switchs interface port uses a pair of wires at pin positions 3 and 6 to Listen and Receive. Consider a
phone call, you picked up the phone and start talking, your voice transmitter going through the microphone and the
person who is listening to your voice on the other end receiving your voice through the speaker. The same thing
happens between the PCs NIC and the switchs interface port.
PCs NIC Talks or Transmits (TX) on pins 1 and 2; therefore, Listens or Receives (RX) on pins 3 and 6.
Switchs interface port Talks or Transmits (TX) on pins 3 and 6; therefore, Listens or Receives (RX) on port 1 and 2.
To allow PCs NIC to communicate with a switch, the UTP cable must use a Straight Through cable pinouts. The Term
pinouts refer to the wiring of which color wire is placed in each of the eight numbered pin positions in the RJ-45
connector. An Ethernet Straight-through cable connects the wire at pin 1 on one end of the cable and to pin 1 at the
other end of the cable; pin 3 on one end connects to pin 3 on the other end, and so on. Briefly, 1 and 2 pinouts
connects straight to 1 and 2 pinouts; 3 and 6 connects straight to 3 and 6 pinouts, total = 2 pairs. Straight-through lay
out its pinouts.
Notice the pinouts above. White Orange to White Orange, Orange to Orange, White Green to White Green, and
finally Green to Green.
Crossover Cable pinouts
A straight cable works correctly when the nodes use opposite pairs for transmitting data. However, when two like
devices pinouts pairs such PC to PC, Switch to Switch, Hub to Hub, and even PC to Router connect to an Ethernet
link, they both transmit on over the same pins. In that case, you need another type of cabling called a Crossover
Cable. Crossover cable lay out its pinouts.
Notice the pinouts above. White Orange to White Green, Orange to Green, White Green to White Orange, and
finally Green to Orange.
Devices Transmits on Pins 1 and 2
PC NICs
Routers
Wireless Access Points
Devices Transmits on Pins 3 and 6
Hubs
Switches
Determining which type of cable to use: Straight through or Crossover Cable
if 1 and 2 type device (PC) connect to 3 and 6 type device (Switch), requires Straight-Through Cable.
If 1 and 2 type device (PC) connect to 1 and 2 type device (PC) requires Crossover cable.
Now reverse it:
if 3 and 6 type device (Switch) connect to 1 and 2 type device (PC) requires Straight-Through Cable.
if 3 and 6 type device (Switch) connected to 3 and 6 type device (Switch) requires Crossover Cable.
UTP Cabling for 1000BASE-T
Interestingly, the same standard above for 10BASE-T and 100BASE-T pinouts works correctly for 1000BASE-T
cabling, except that 1000BASE-T uses the 4 pairs instead. Meaning, when you crimp the RJ-45 cable based on the
color codes above either for Straight-Through or Crossover Cable, this pinouts configuration works correctly on 10,
100, and 1000BASE-T.
100BASE-T Straight-Through uses pin 1 to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2, up through 8, just like in the earlier wiring of 10 and
100BASE-T, it uses all the wires inside the UTP cable. 1000BASE-T Crossover cable crosses the same two-wire pairs
as the crossover similar to earlier 10 and 100BASE-T, the pair at pins 1 and 2 meet with pair 3 and 6. In addition,
another new pair added in case of 1000BASE-T that represents 4 and 5 to meet with 7 and 8 and crosses the pairs.
Its just another UTP cable using the complete 4 pairs instead of 2 pairs.
Forwarding Data inside an Ethernet Networks
Ethernet Protocol Standards rules and control Ethernet regardless of the type of physical Ethernet link used such
Copper or Fiber. Ethernet Protocols Control how Ethernet Hosts, Switches, and Routers forward Ethernet frames
through an Ethernet Network based on the MAC Address System.
Ethernet Data Link Protocol
The Ethernet Data Link protocol defines the Ethernet frame:
An Ethernet Header at the front
The Encapsulated Data in the middle
And an Ethernet Trailer at the end
The following figure shows an Ethernet Frame.
Breaking down the Ethernet Header to 5 sections
* The IEEE 802.3 specification limits the data portion of the 802.3 frame to a minimum of 46 and a maximum of 1500
bytes. The Term Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) defines the maximum Layer 3 packet that can be sent over a
medium. Because the Layer 3 packet rests inside the Data Portion of an Ethernet frame, therefore, 1500 bytes is the
largest IP MTU allowed over an Ethernet.
Hubs and Switches Overview
The use of modern switches allows the use of Full-Duplex logic, which is much faster and simpler than half-duplex
logic used by Hubs.
Sending Ethernet with modern Switches using Full-Duplex vs. Hubs using Half-Duplex
In order to understand the difference between Hubs and switches, we need to go back little bit in time, to the
beginning of the 1990s! IEEE introduced 10BASE-T standard in1990; 10BASE-T used a centralized cabling model
similar to todays ethernet LAN, meaning each device connecting to the LAN Hub using a UTP cable, using Category
3 back then (CAT3 UTP Cable). However, instead of a LAN switch, the early 10BASE-T networks used Hubs,
because LAN switches had not yet been created.
LAN Hubs forward data using physical layer standards, and therefore considered to be Layer 1 devices. The
downside of using LAN Hubs: if two or more devices transmitted a signal at the same instant, the electrical signal
collides and becomes corrupted. The worst part that a Hub repeats all received electrical signals, even if it receives
multiple signals at the same. Being without switches in the market yet, and to prevent collisions due to using Hubs, the
Ethernet nodes must use Half-Duplex logic based on Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection
(CSMA/CD) instead of Full-Duplex logic. that means, a collision problem only occurs when two or more devices send
at the same time and collide, Half-Duplex logic solved the problem by telling the nodes to sense the cable and check if
someone else is sending, wait fraction of seconds before sending then send again.
CSMA/CD method of recovering from colliding signals as follows:
Step1: A device with a frame to send listens until the Ethernet line is not busy.
Step2: When the Ethernet is not busy, the sender begins sending the frame. (Half-Duplex Logic)
Step3: The sender listens to discover whether a collision occurs; collisions might be caused by many reasons,
including unfortunate timing. If a collision occurs, all currently sending nodes do the following:
They send a jamming signal that tells all nodes that a collision happened.
They independently choose a random time to wait before trying again, to avoid unfortunate timing.
The next attempt starts again at Step1.
Although most companies uses Switches these days and I doubt that you will ever see a Hub now a days, but
collision still can happen per port using switches! Yes, most common reasons are: Longer Cable then 100 Meter or
Duplex Mismatch between the PCs, Servers, or Printers NIC and the switchs Interface Port. That means, if the
Duplex Auto-negotiation of one side (PC or Switch Port) failed to detect the duplex and speed settings at the other
side (PC or Switch), then the port defaults to Half-Duplex! So you still need a very good understanding of Collision
and how to prevent it.
Although using 10BASE-T with Hub improved ethernet as compared to the older standards, several
drawbacks continued to exist:
1. When hubs receive an electrical signal on one port, the hub repeats the signal out all other ports.
2. When two or more devices send at the same time, an electrical collision occurs, making both signals corrupt. As a
result, devices must take turns by using CSMA/CD.
*CSMA/CD tell all devices on the a Collision Domain to back off for few seconds in order to overcome the collision
situation and send a signal again, this logic makes shared signal which is connected to Hub as Half-Duplex Network.
Briefly, devices connected to Hub cant send and receive at the same time. Only one device at a time since it is Half-
Duplex. Consider a Classroom with one door, used to enter or exit only one student at a time.
And broadcasts sent by one device are heard by, and processed by, all other devices on the LAN. Broadcast basically
a drawback of both Hubs and Layer 2 Switches. Only Routers, Layer 3 switches, and VLANs can separate Broadcast
Domains.
Besides, as One Collision Domain, Unicast Frames are heard by all other devices on a Hub LAN. * Switches
overcome this draw back since the switchs ports separate Collision Domains, making Unicast frames heard only
between 2 devices, which means, each switchs port is a Collision Domain by itself. Therefore, switch port allows
Full-Duplex between sending and receiving host using switch ports.
Over time and through 1990s, the performance of many Ethernet networks based on hubs started to degrade. People
developed too many Applications to take advantage of the LAN bandwidth provided by 10BASE-T. More devices were
added to each Ethernet that might have one Hub or multiple Hubs. However, the devices on the same Ethernet could
not send (collectively) more than 10 Mbps of traffic because they all shared the 10 Mbps of Bandwidth. In addition, the
increase in traffic volumes resulted in an increased number of collisions, requiring more retransmissions and wasting
more LAN capacity.
Transparent Bridge
To solve Hubs drawbacks, especially the ONE Collision Domain situation, vendors came up with a Transparent Bridge
to divide a One Collision Domain to 2 Collisions Domains.
Bridges separated devices into groups called Collision Domains.
Bridges reduced the number of collisions that occurred in a Hubs network, therefore frames inside one collision
domain will not collide with frames in another collision domain.
Bridges increased bandwidth by giving each collision domain its own separate bandwidth, with one sender at a time
per collision domain.
Why hubs considered One Big Collision Domain (CD)? If we want to analyze an 8 ports Hub, we will find out that even
though there are 8 ports it does not mean 8 separated collision domains (like Switches), Hubs are Layer 1 devices,
they are dump devices (Just Repeaters) and have no intelligence what so ever about where the electrical signal going
through them, or where it might be going in the LAN, or where should be forwarded.
So all they do as dump devices with the incoming signal from a specific port is: to Flood it out through the rest of the 8
ports (except the incoming port where the signal arrived) with no intelligence such Layer 2 Switches where it
investigate each frame. Meaning, if PC1 in the figure above wants to talk to the Web-Server, PC2 has to listen as well
to the conversation which is Unicast communication and not broadcast!!!, but because hubs flood the signal to all
ports (even Unicast), PC2 will for sure hear the conversation; creating unnecessary traffic, that is sharing and wasting
bandwidth.
The Bridge, a predecessor to todays Ethernet LAN switch, uses logic so that the frames in one Collision Domain do
not collide with frames in the other Collision Domain. The bridge forwards frames between its two interfaces, and
unlike a Hub, a bridge will buffer or queue the frame until the outgoing interface can send the frame. As shown in the
figure above, the 10BASE-T network on the left (CD1) has its own 10 Mbps to share, as does the network on the right
(CD2). In this case, the total network bandwidth is doubled to 20 Mbps as compared with 10BASE-T One Big
Collision Domain previous figure above. Because of the Bridge, the devices on each side of the network (CD1 and
CD2) can send to each other at 10 Mbps at the same time, created a Full-Duplex connection between CD1 and CD2
at the Bridge side.
Todays Modern Bridge (LAN Switch)
If you replace a Hub with a LAN switch, a switch prevents collisions since it operates at the Data Link Layer, therefore
considered as Layer 2 device, meaning that it looks at the data link layer Header and Trailer. And most important as
well, a switch would look at the MAC addresses to determine frames destination, giving the switch a way to manage
the frames through some kind of forwarding to the right port, and even if the switch needed to forward multi-frames to
the same network device, the switch would send one frame and queue the other frames until the first frame was
processed and finished.
Each switchs port is a Collision Domain by itself. If only two devices connected to each other using Layer 2
intelligence (which means the signal will be addressed as Frame), they can use Full-Duplex. Switches use Full-Duplex
on each link (One Pair to send and another Pair to receive), meaning one way to Enter and another way to Exit. But
the concept might be difficult to see. Full-Duplex means that a NIC or Switch port has no half-duplex restrictions. A
separate article Understanding Hardware Switching Concept will further explain how a switch function as Full-
Duplex device.
LAN switches perform the same basic core as bridges, but at much faster speeds and with many enhanced hardware
features such Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) for faster frame forwarding. Thats why is very hard to
emulate a switch using GNS3, but you still can use the EtherSwitch model.
The following figure shows how a switchs ports acted like an independent bridge by itself, created 4 Collision
Domains and 4 Ethernet Segments.
Comparing Layer 1 Limitations vs. Layer 2 Functions
Layer 1 Limitation:
Cannot communicate or collaborate with upper Layers.
No Addressing Scheme to identify Network devices by Mac Addresses.
Only recognize streams of bits NO frames.
Cannot determine the source of a transmission when multiple devices are transmitting.
Layer 2 Functions:
The Ability to communicate and collaborate with upper Layers via the Sub-Layer of Data-Link Layer called Logical
Link Control.
Uses Addresses Scheme to identify Network devices by MAC addresses.
Uses Frames to organize bits into groups.
Uses the sub-layer of Data-Link Layer Called Media Access Control (MAC) to identify transmission sources.
Next: Understanding MAC Address
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About Imad Daou
He is the founder of CCNA HUB, a CCNA Training HUB to help CCNA students get certified. Imad has more than 10
years of IT experience as Field Service and Consulting Engineer. A+, Network+, Server+, Security+, Storage+, HP,
Dell, and IBM Hardware Certified. He's a Professional SMB IT Consultant.
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