Lesson 4: LAN Basics

Ethernet | Token Ring | FDDI

Ethernet Reliability

Ethernet is known as being a very reliable local area networking protocol. In this example, A is transmitting information and B also has information to transmit. Let’s say that A & B listen to the network, hear no traffic and broadcast at the same time. A collision occurs when these two packets crash into one another on the network. Both transmissions are corrupted and unusable.

When a collision occurs on the network, the NIC card sensing the collision, in this case, station C sends out a jam signal that jams the entire network for a designated amount of time.

Once the jam signal has been received and recognized by all of the stations on the network, stations A and D will both back off for different amounts of time before they try to retransmit. This type of technology is known as Carrier Sense Multiple Access With Collision Detection – CSMA/CD.

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