Ruby Tech GS-1224L manual Pre Sfd, Fcs

User Manual

Bit 47					bit 0
1st byte	2nd byte	3rd byte	4th byte	5th byte	6th byte
	OUI code			Serial number

Table 3-3 Ethernet MAC address

The first bit of the first byte in the Destination address (DA) determines the address to be a Unicast (0) or Multicast frame (1), known as I/G bit indicating individual (0) or group (1). So the 48-bit address space is divided into two portions, Unicast and Multicast. The second bit is for global-unique (0) or locally-unique address. The former is assigned by the device manufacturer, and the later is usually assigned by the administrator. In practice, global-unique addresses are always applied.

A unicast address is identified with a single network interface. With this nature of MAC address, a frame transmitted can exactly be received by the target an interface the destination MAC points to.

A multicast address is identified with a group of network devices or network interfaces. In Ethernet, a many-to-many connectivity in the LANs is provided. It provides a mean to send a frame to many network devices at a time. When all bit of DA is 1s, it is a broadcast, which means all network device except the sender itself can receive the frame and response.

Ethernet Frame Format

There are two major forms of Ethernet frame, type encapsulation and length encapsulation, both of which are categorized as four frame formats 802.3/802.2 SNAP, 802.3/802.2, Ethernet II and Netware 802.3 RAW. We will introduce the basic Ethernet frame format defined by the IEEE 802.3 standard required for all MAC implementations. It contains seven fields explained below.

PRE	SFD	DA	SA	Type/Length	Data	Pad bit if any	FCS
7	7	6	6	2	46	-1500	4

Fig. 3-3 Ethernet frame structure

-Preamble (PRE) —The PRE is 7-byte long with alternating pattern of ones and zeros used to tell the receiving node that a frame is coming, and to synchronize the physical receiver with the incoming bit stream. The preamble pattern is:

10101010 10101010 10101010 10101010 10101010 10101010 10101010

-Start-of-frame delimiter (SFD) — The SFD is one-byte long with alternating pattern of ones and zeros, ending with two consecutive 1-bits. It immediately follows the preamble and uses the last two consecutive 1s bit to indicate that the next bit is the start of the data packet and the left-most bit in the left-most byte of the destination address. The SFD pattern is 10101011.

Publication date: March, 2007

Revision A1

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