Making Connections
23
Connectivity Rules
Ethernet (10Mbps) networks have the following connectivity rules:
♦
The maximum length of a twisted-pair cable segment is 100 meters.
Cabling should be Category 3 or better.
♦
Between any two end-stations in a collision domain, there may be up
to five cable segments and four intermediate repeaters (hubs, hub
stacks, or other repeaters).
♦
If there is a path between any two end-stations containing five seg-
ments and four repeaters, then at least two of the cable segments must
be point-to-point link segments (e.g., 10BASE-T or 10BASE-FL),
while the remaining segments may be populated (mixing) segments
(e.g., 10BASE-2 or 10BASE-5).
Fast Ethernet (100Mbps) networks have the following connectivity rules:
♦
The maximum length of a twisted-pair segment (that is, the distance
between a port in the hub to a single-address network device such as a
PC, server, or Ethernet switch) is 100 meters. Cabling and other wir-
ing should be certified as Category 5 UTP or shielded twisted-
pair(STP).
♦
The maximum diameter in a collision domain is about 205 meters us-
ing two Class II hubs (or hub stacks).
♦
Between any two end-stations in a collision domain, there may be up
to three cable segments and two Class II hubs or hub stacks.
