Ethernet

Course 2 Networks,
Spanning Tree Protocol,
and VLANs
Ethernet
Networks
Ethernet
• the family of LAN products covered by the IEEE 802.3 standard.
• enables devices to communicate with each other via a protocol.
• describes how network devices can format and transmit data packets -> other devices belonging to the same
network segment can recognize, receive and process them.
• defines two units of transmission: packet and frame.
• is currently used for approximately 85 % of the world's LAN-connected PCs and workstations.
• is the major LAN technology because:
• is easy to understand, implement, manage, and maintain
• allows low-cost network implementation
• provides extensive topological flexibility for network installation
• guarantees successful interconnection and operation of standards-compliant products, regardless of
manufacturer
 the original Ethernet was developed as an experimental coaxial
cable network in the 1970s by Xerox Corporation

was supposed to operate with a data rate of 3 Mbps using a Carrier

Sense Multiple Access Collision Detect (CSMA/CD) protocol for LANs
with heavy traffic requirements.

Ethernet- 1980: 10-Mbps Ethernet Version 1.0 specification by the three-

company consortium: Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel
Corporation and Xerox Corporation.
A Brief the original IEEE 802.3 standard was based on, and was very similar
History to, the Ethernet Version 1.0 specification.

the draft standard was approved by the 802.3 working group in

1983

published as an official standard in 1985 (ANSI/IEEE Std. 802.3-

1985).
Ethernet Physical Standards
• There are four standards currently defined:
• 10 Mbps—10Base-T Ethernet: SLOW
• 100 Mbps—100Base-T or Fast Ethernet
• 1,000 Mbps—1000Base-T or Gigabit Ethernet
• 10,000 Mbps—10 Gigabit Ethernet
Fast Ethernet
• kept the old frame formats, interfaces, and procedural rules, but the bit time
was reduced.
• the advantages of twisted-pair wiring were so overwhelming that fast Ethernet
is based entirely on this design.
• allows interconnection by either hubs or switches.
• CSMA/CD algorithm continues to work => the relationship between the
minimum frame size and maximum cable length must be maintained as the
network speed goes up from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps.
• the most popular Fast Ethernet standard is 100BASE-TX
Gigabit Ethernet
• the most popular form was 802.3ab that appeared in 1999.
• the goals were essentially the same as those for fast Ethernet:
• to increase performance tenfold
• to maintain compatibility with all existing Ethernet standards.
• had to offer unacknowledged datagram service with both unicast and broadcast,
• to use the same 48-bit addressing scheme already in use,
• to maintain the same frame format, including the minimum and maximum frame sizes.
=> The final standard met all these goals.
• all configurations of Gigabit Ethernet use point-to-point links, supports two different modes of operation: full-
duplex mode and half-duplex mode.
• supports both copper and fiber cabling.
• interfaces and switches used to be expensive, but their prices fell rapidly as sales volumes picked up
 Full duplex vs Half duplex

Half duplex = the communication

Full duplex = allows traffic in both
will occur only in one direction; is
directions at the same time and is
used when the computers are
used when there is a central
connected to a hub rather than a
switch connected to computers
switch; collisions are possible, so
(or other switches) on the
the standard CSMA/CD protocol is
periphery.
required.
10-gigabit Ethernet
• Is a Gigabit standard with a speed 1000x faster than the original Ethernet.
• the connections at long distance use optical fiber, while the short connections may use
copper or fiber.
• support only full-duplex operation
• concentrate on the details of physical layers that can run at very high speed.
• gigabit Ethernet interfaces autonegotiate and fall back to the highest speed supported
by both ends of the line.
• auto-negotiation= lets two stations automatically negotiate the optimum speed
duplexity
Why the longevity??

Ethernet is simple and flexible, is easy to maintain,

Ethernet interworks easily with

TCP/IP, there is no software to
has been able to evolve in
install, other than the drivers
certain crucial ways.
and not much in the way of
configuration tables to manage.
Ethernet Network Elements
• Ethernet LANs consist of network nodes and interconnecting media.
• the network nodes fall into two major classes:
• Data terminal equipment (DTE) - devices that are either the source or the destination of data
frames;
e.g.: PCs, workstations, file servers, or print servers
that, as a group, are all often referred to as end stations.
• Data communication equipment (DCE) - intermediate network devices that receive and forward
frames across the network;
e.g.: standalone devices such as repeaters, network
switches, and routers, or communications interface
units such as interface cards and modems.
 the simplest structure is the point-to-point interconnection:
only two network units are involved, and the connection may
be DTE-to-DTE, DTE-to-DCE, or DCE-to-DCE;
Ethernet the original Ethernet networks were implemented with a
Network coaxial bus structure;

Topologie
s and since the early 1990s, the network configuration of choice
has been the star-connected topology;
Structure
s all connections in a star network are point-to-point links
implemented with either twisted-pair or optical fiber cable;
The Basic • Preamble - used to allow the transmitter and receiver to synchronize their
communication; is an alternating pattern of binary 56 ones and zeros.
Ethernet • Start-of-frame delimiter (SFD) - is always 10101011; used to indicate the beginning of
Frame the frame information.
Format • Destination address (DA) - is the MAC address of the machine receiving data.
• Source addresses (SA) - is the MAC address of the machine transmitting data.
• Length/Type - also known as Ethertype;
• Data/Padding (a.k.a. Payload) - sequence of n bytes of any value, where n 1500 ;
if n<46, the Payload field must be extended by adding a filler (a pad) sufficient to bring
the Payload length to 46 bytes.
• Frame check sequence (FCS) - contains a 32-bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC) value,
which is created by the sending MAC and is recalculated by the receiving MAC to check
for damaged frames; the FCS is generated over the DA, SA, Length, and Payload.
Ethernet frame types
• Ethernet supports two frame types, and they have been standardized;
• The 16-bit field that follows the source address (SA) indicates whether
the frame is Ethernet II or 802.3:
• If the value is 1500 or less, the frame is treated as 802.3.
• If the value is greater than 1500, the frame is treated as Ethernet II.
• The Ethernet II frame is normally used for transmission of IP datagrams.
• Ethernet 802.3 was developed by the IEEE from the original Ethernet
standard in 1983.
 The two Ethernet frame standards: 802.3 and
Ethernet II.

• 802.3 has a frame defined by IEEE and is used mainly for IPX.
• Ethernet II: Length has been replaced by Type to identify upper-layer protocols; is the most commonly used frame today.
• Ethernet uses a Type field to tell the receiver what to do with the frame.
 The IEEE 802.3
Relationship to
the OSI Reference
Model

• Ethernet resides at the data link layer;

• this layer can be subdivided further into two sublayers:
• the Logical Link Control (LLC) - may provide additional functions such as flow control
or retransmission;
• the Media Access Control (MAC)- responsible for determining the physical source and
destination addresses for a particular frame and for the synchronization of data
transmission and error checking
MAC and LLC sublayer

• The MAC sublayer has two primary responsibilities:

• Data encapsulation, including frame assembly before
transmission, and frame parsing/error detection during and after
reception;
• Media access control, including initiation of frame transmission
and recovery from transmission failure;
• Logical Link Control (LLC), provides the interface between the
Ethernet MAC and the upper layers in the protocol stack of the end
station;
• specifications for LLC entity are common for all IEEE 802 LAN protocols
- network compatibility becomes the primary responsibility of the
particular network protocol.
Frame Transmission and
reception
• whenever an end station MAC receives a transmit-frame request (the accompanying
address + data information) from the LLC sublayer, the MAC begins the transmission
sequence by transferring the LLC information into the MAC frame buffer.
• The preamble and start-of-frame delimiter are inserted in the PRE and SFD fields.
• The destination and source addresses are inserted into the address fields.
• The LLC data bytes are counted, and the number of bytes is inserted into the
Length/Type field.
• The LLC data bytes are inserted into the Data field; if the number of LLC data bytes < 46,
a pad is added to bring the Data field length up to 46.
• An FCS value is generated over the DA, SA, Length/Type, and Data fields and is
appended to the end of the Data field.
Frame Transmission
• After the frame is assembled, actual frame transmission will depend on
whether the MAC is operating in:
• half-duplex
• full-duplex mode.
• The IEEE 802.3 standard currently requires that all Ethernet MACs support half-
duplex operation: the MAC can be either transmitting or receiving a frame, but
it cannot be doing both simultaneously.
• Full-duplex operation is an optional MAC capability that allows the MAC to
transmit and receive frames simultaneously.
The CSMA/CD Access Method
• The CSMA/CD protocol: two or more stations could share a common media in a switch-less
environment when the protocol does not require central arbitration, access tokens, or assigned time
slots to indicate when a station will be allowed to transmit.
• The CSMA/CD access rules:
• Carrier sense (CS) - each station continuously listens for traffic on the medium to determine when
gaps between frame transmissions occur.
• Multiple access (MA) - stations may begin transmitting any time they detect that the network is
quiet (there is no traffic).
• Collision detect (CD)- if two or more stations in the same CSMA/CD network (collision domain)
begin transmitting at approximately the same time, the bit streams from the transmitting stations
will interfere (collide) with each other, and both transmissions will be unreadable.
Limits for Half-Duplex Operation
Full-Duplex Transmission
• is an optional MAC capability that allows simultaneous two-way transmission over
point-to-point links.
• is functionally much simpler than half-duplex transmission because it involves no media
contention, no collisions, no need to schedule retransmissions, and no need for
extension bits on the end of short frames.
• more time available for transmission, an effective doubling of the link bandwidth
because each link can now support full-rate, simultaneous, two-way transmission.
• transmission can usually begin as soon as frames are ready to send.
• the only restriction is that there must be a minimum-length interframe gap between
successive frames.
Frame Reception
• is essentially the same for both half-duplex and full-duplex operations;
• exception: full-duplex MACs must have separate frame buffers and data paths to allow for
simultaneous frame transmission and reception;
• is the reverse of frame transmission;
• the destination address of the received frame is checked and matched against the station's address
list to determine whether the frame is destined for that station;
• if an address match is found, the frame length is checked and the received FCS is compared to the
FCS that was generated during frame reception.
• if the frame length is okay and there is an FCS match, the frame type is determined by the contents
of the Length/Type field.
• the frame is then parsed and forwarded to the appropriate upper layer.
 repeater - the simplest Ethernet device, simply used to repeat
an Ethernet signal along;

hub – usually a small device that connects from 4 to 8 Ethernet

Ethernet devices so that they can communicate with each other;
– it mimics the functions of an Ethernet wire, it is half-
Devices duplex only, so collisions can and often do occur;

switch – processes the Ethernet header information in the

frame and determines what the destination MAC address is;

– provides full-duplex capabilities and avoids collisions

Ethernet
Devices
Ethernet Switching Operations
• Ethernet switches perform an intelligent forwarding operation.
• the switch will forward a frame only to the port that needs to receive it.
• the switch performs this function by building a dynamic MAC address table that
matches MAC addresses to ports so that it “knows” which ports correspond to which
MAC addresses.
• switches perform this process by using the source MAC address of packets arriving on
ports to dynamically learn which MAC addresses are associated with an interface.
• the switch records this address information into a MAC forwarding database (FDB).
Switches build up their FDB table by recording the source address of frames as
they enter each
port on the switch.
Virtual LANs
Virtual LANs
• VLAN = mechanism that allows you to segregate devices and their associated
traffic from other devices and traffic, even when all the devices are physically
part of the same switched infrastructure.
• why you couldn’t simply use a router to achieve this sort of separation???
-> physical limitations on the deployment of routers, e.g. you might have devices
in multiple buildings that are part of the same segregated group.
• two main reasons to use VLANs:
• to decrease the amount of broadcast traffic
• to increase the security of your network
Creating and Using VLANs
• in theory: many ways to create VLANs - by MAC address, IP address, workstation names, and
so on
• in practice: these methods are very difficult and unsupportable.
• the primary way that VLANs are created in modern networks is by physical port.
• each VLAN is identified by a VLAN ID (VID) - usually a number such as 100, 101, and the like.
• they can reside on only a single switch, or they can be distributed throughout the entire
network on each switch.
• each device in a VLAN (regardless of its physical location) can communicate directly with
every other device in the same VLAN and cannot communicate outside of the VLAN except
through a router.
The VLAN header
• can be broken down into two parts:
• the VLAN tag type and
• the tag control information.
• the VLAN tag type is a fixed value that is an indicator of a VLAN tag.
• the tag control information has three parts:
1. Priority Value (User Priority) - specifies a frame’s priority
2. Canonical format indicator (CFI) - 1 bit; CFI=0 means that the MAC address information is in its
simplest form.
3. VLAN identifier (VID) - identifies the VLAN that the frame belongs to; if VID = 0, the tag header
contains only priority information.
VLAN tags are incorporated into the standard Ethernet frame through the
addition of a VLAN
tag field.
Spanning Tree
Protocol
 Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
- is a protocol that allows bridges/switches (used to interconnect the same two computer network segments) to exchange information, so
that only one of them will handle a given message that is being sent between two computers within the network.
- was developed to solve instability and to maintain a loop free network.

- once the spanning tree is built, links that are not part of the tree are disabled.
- if a link that is part of the spanning tree fails, a new tree is constructed, and some formerly disabled links may now return to service.

- was invented in 1985 by Radia Perlman and was first published as a standard by the IEEE as 802.1D.
- revisions were published in 1998 and 2004;

- the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) was introduced in 1998 as IEEE 802.1w.

- in 2004, the IEEE incorporated the changes of RSTP into the STP and removed previous versions (published as IEEE 802.1D-2004).
Spanning Tree topology
• can be thought of as a tree that includes the following components:
• A root (a root bridge/switch)
• Branches (LANs and designated bridges/switches)
• Leaves (end nodes)
• there are no disconnected components that are considered part of the tree.
• the tree encompasses all its leaves (end nodes) and there is usually only one tree for any Ethernet network.
• there are no loops in the tree.
• if you trace a path from one leaf (end node) to any other leaf (end node), you’ll find there is only one
possible path.
• STP organizes and connects switches into a loop-free topology while leaving no segments isolated.
 Selecting a Root Bridge

• key concept!
• the root bridge in a STP is important because it is the root bridge that
serves as the starting point for building the STP tree.
• the way a root bridge is selected in based on a numeric value called the
bridge ID (BID) - determines its priority for root bridge selection.
• the bridge with the lowest BID becomes the root bridge.
The root bridge is selected based on the lowest bridge priority