Interface Network .i

Appendix

 

 

Appendix

Technical Information

Fast Ethernet Wiring

100BASE-TX Specification: The 100BASE-TX specification supports 100 Mbps transmission over two pairs of category 5 twisted-pair Ethernet (TPE) wiring. One pair is for transmit operations and the other for receive operations. Segment lengths are limited to 100 meters with 100BASE-TX for signal timing reasons. This complies with the EIA 568 wiring standard.

Fast Ethernet Hubs and Switches

The two basic types of hubs are shared hubs and switching hubs. This motherboard’s network interface can be used with either type of hub for 10 Mbps. At 100 Mbps, a TX hub or switch is required.

Shared hubs

In a shared network environment, computers are connected to hubs called repeaters. All ports of the repeater hub share a fixed amount of bandwidth, or data capacity. On a 100 Mbps shared hub, all nodes on the hub must share the 100 Mbps of bandwidth. As stations are added to the hub, the effective band-width available to any individual station gets smaller. Shared hubs do not support full duplex.

Think of a shared repeater hub as a single-lane highway that everyone shares. As the number of vehicles on the highway increases, the traffic becomes con-gested and transit time increases for individual cars.

On a shared hub all nodes must operate at the same speed, either 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps. Fast Ethernet repeaters provide 100 Mbps of available bandwidth, ten times more than what’s available with a 10BASE-T repeater.

Repeaters use a well-established, uncomplicated design, making them highly cost effective for connecting PCs within a workgroup. These are the most common type of Ethernet hubs in the installed base.

Switching hubs

In a switched network environment, each port gets a fixed, dedicated amount of band- width. In the highway scenario, each car has its own lane on a multi-lane highway and there is no sharing.

In a switched environment, data is sent only to the port that leads to the pro-per destination station. Network bandwidth is not shared among all stations, and each new station added to the hub gets access to the full bandwidth of the network.

If a new user is added to a 100 Mbps switching hub, the new station receives its own dedicated 100 Mbps link and doesn’t impact the 100 Mbps bandwidth of another station. Switching hubs can effectively increase the overall bandwidth available on the network, significantly improving performance. Switching hubs can also support full duplex.

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ASUS P2B-D2 User’s Manual