A coaxial cable local area network first described by Metcalfe & Boggs of Xerox PARC in 1976. Specified by DEC, INTEL & XEROX (DIX), IEEE 802.3. Now recognised as the industry standard. Data is broken into packets. Packets are transmitted using the CSMA/CD algorithm until they arrive at the destination without colliding with any other. The first contention slot after a transmission is reserved for an acknowledge packet. A node is either transmitting or receiving at any instant. Bandwidth ~10Mbit/s. Disk-Ethernet-Disk transfer rate with TCP/IP is typically 30 kilobyte per second. The cable is a 50 ohm coaxial cable with multiple shielding.
Version 2 specifies that collision detect of the transceiver must be activated during the inter-packet gap and that when transmission finishes the differential transmit lines are driven to 0V (half step). It also specifies some network management functions such as reporting collisions, retries and deferrals.
Usenet newsgroup: comp.dcom.lans.ethernet.
See also cheapernet.
(15 Nov 1994)