|  | 7.1 |
| 10-Mbps and 100-Mbps Ethernet
|  | 7.1.2 |
| 10BASE5
The original 1980 Ethernet product 10BASE5 transmitted 10 Mbps over a single thick coaxial cable bus. 10BASE5 is important because it was the first medium used for Ethernet. 10BASE5 was part of the original 802.3 standard. The primary benefit of 10BASE5 was length. Today it may be found in legacy installations, but would not be recommended for new installations. 10BASE5 systems are inexpensive and require no configuration, but basic components like NICs are very difficult to find as well as the fact that it is sensitive to signal reflections on the cable. 10BASE5 systems also represent a single point of failure. 10BASE5 uses Manchester encoding. It has a solid central conductor. Each of the maximum five segments of thick coax may be up to 500 m (1640.4 ft) in length. The cable is large, heavy, and difficult to install. However, the distance limitations were favorable and this prolonged its use in certain applications. Because the medium is a single coaxial cable, only one station can transmit at a time or else a collision will occur. Therefore, 10BASE5 only runs in half-duplex resulting in a maximum of 10 Mbps of data transfer. Figure illustrates one possible configuration for a maximum end-to-end collision domain. Between any two distant stations only three repeated segments are permitted to have stations connected to them, with the other two repeated segments used only as link segments to extend the network.
|  | Lab Activity
Lab Exercise: Waveform Decoding This lab is to integrate knowledge of networking media, OSI Layers 1, 2, and 3, and Ethernet, by taking a digital waveform of an Ethernet frame and decoding it.
|  | Interactive Media Activity
Matching: 10BASE5 After completing this activity, the student will learn the characteristics of 10BASE5 technology. Interactive Media Activity 7.1.2 is located in the CCNA 3.0 Bridge 1 Activities and Quizzes file. The Activities and Quizzes file can be downloaded in the Course Material section of your class homepage.
Web Links
10BASE5 http://www.usyd.edu.au/is/comms/networkcourse/ USydNet_mod3_ ethernet.html#toc10BASE5