The Ethernet Technology Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Ethernet Technology Report - Essay Example For transporting digital bits of data through the carrier waves, Ethernet has some encoding techniques. These encoding techniques aid in synchronizing the data sending and data receiving stations and providing a signal with strength sufficient enough to deliver a required amount of data rate. So, the difference in encoding techniques relate to the difference in the data transfer speed provided by the Ethernet cable. For instance, the three encoding techniques Manchester, 4B/5B and 8B/10B are used for the providing Ethernet LAN of speeds 10Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1Gbps respectively (TechFest.com, 1999). Manchester encoding delivers a signal of frequency 10MHz which is sufficient to provide a data rate of 10Mbps for the 10Base5 and 10Base2 coaxial cables. The installation is easy and new systems can be added easily. However, owing to the bus topology (in 10Base5) and the fact that the cabling is half duplex (i.e. same cable used for sending and receiving), chances of collisions would be mor e and the throughput of the system would be less. In case of daisy chains (10Base2), routing difficulties would be present. Secondly, the higher data rates cannot be achieved due to coaxial cables. In case of using 10BaseT twisted pair cables, 20Mbps can be achieved owing to full duplex mode. New hosts can be added easily in the supported star topology network. However, repeaters are required after every 100m unlike 10Base5 and 10Base2. When using 10BaseFL, repeaters are not needed till 1000m. The 4B/5B encoding delivers a 62.5MHz frequency signal on the 100Base-Tx Cat 5 twisted pair cabling. A signal of maximally 100MHz is enough to be transmitted over a medium of 100Mbps. In full duplex mode, any new host can be added without affecting the collision rates. 4B/5B encoding is also used in 100Base-Fx cables.