The most widely-installed local area network technology is the Ethernet. It is most widely used system of connecting different computers in a LAN network. Today Ethernet is officially determined as IEEE 802.3 for the industry standard.
In 1976 from a previous specification called Alohanet, Ethernet was originally developed by Xerox PARC. Later, it was further developed by the other companies like INTEL, DEC, AND Xerox. Wire is used to connect the devices in Ethernet. Coaxial cable or special grades of twisted pair cables are used in wire of the Ethernet. 10 BASE-T is the most commonly used Ethernet that provides 10 Mbps data transmission speed.
The data are segmented into packets and carried through the network using Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Carrier Detection protocol (CSMA/CD). CSMA/CD protocol helps devices to share the bandwidth equally without having two devices transmit data at the same time. It was mainly design to solve the problem of collisions of packets which occurs due to the continuous flow of packets from different nodes.
Introduction of Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit is the latest transmission technology based on the Ethernet protocols which provides high speed data transmission up to 1 gigabit per second. It is defined in the IEEE 802.3 standard and also used as the back bone in the network and server connectivity. In 1998 gigabit Ethernet protocol promises to be a prevalent player in high- speed data LAN network backbones and server connectivity. It can transfer data in full duplex using switch and half duplex in a shared environment with the help of hub.
Gigabit Ethernet is an extension of 10Base-T and 100Base-T Ethernet standards. It can transfer the data in the high-speed of 1000 Mbps. For the long distance optical fiber is used to transmit the data in high-speed but for short distances, other cable such as twisted pair and copper cables are used in it.
Dr. Robert Metcalf was the developer of gigabit Ethernet and in