3Com 7600 manual Overview, Ethernet

11	ETHERNET LANS AND BRIDGES IN
	THE 7600 CARD

This chapter provides basic concepts and information about the following topics and how they are implemented in the 7600 Card.

	Q	Overview of Ethernet
	Q	Fast Ethernet
	Q	Transparent Bridges
	Q	Spanning Tree Protocol
	Q Bridged-LAN Environments and vLANs
Overview of	An Ethernet is a CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense, Multiple Access with Collision
Ethernet	Detection) LAN. Carrier Sense means that a device on an Ethernet senses
	the traffic and transmits only when the medium is idle. Multiple Access

means that many devices share the same medium and have equal access rights to transmit. Collision Detection means that devices monitor the medium even while they are transmitting and so can detect a collision, that is, another station transmitting while they are transmitting.

The speed of transmission on an Ethernet LAN is normally 10 Mbps.

Stations on an Ethernet LAN can include computers, workstations or terminals. Ethernet LANs use a common bus that consists of a coax, twisted pair or fiber-optic cable that runs between the stations. The connection point of each station to the cable is called a node. Two or more LANs can be connected together by a bridge to form an efficient bridged-LAN environment. In this context, an Ethernet LAN is also called an Ethernet segment.