The Variety of Ethernet Physical Layer Standards

The term Ethernet refers to an entire family of standards. Some standards define the specifics of how to send data over a particular type of cabling and at a particular speed. Other standards define protocols, or rules, that the Ethernet nodes must follow to be a part of an Ethernet LAN. All these Ethernet standards come from the IEEE and include the number 802.3 as the beginning part of the standard name.

Ethernet supports a large variety of options for physical Ethernet links given its long history over the past 40 or so years. Today, Ethernet includes many standards for different kinds of optical and copper cabling, and for speeds from 10 megabits per second (Mbps) up to 100 gigabits per second ...

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