What is ethernet anyway?
What is ethernet? Upon a quick first glance ethernet appears to be a word made up of two distinct words: ether and net. But upon a closer investigation you will find that ether is a term used to generally describe a class of chemical compounds.
Ethernet is nothing like what ether means in the classical sense, because we are talking about a computer networking technology. Like chemical compounds classed generally as ether, computer networking technologies are generally classified as ethernet.
Show me
Showing anyone ethernet in it’s physical state might be impossible. At least for me it is. It is not known if anyone has ever seen ethernet directly. I can not describe what ethernet looks like. In short, its a very fast high speed data connection.
Since we are touching upon physics and properties of light when discussing ethernet, I think I can say mass and gravity and energy are involved. I can’t say what color it is, or what it smells like. I can only experience and describe the effect of ethernet. In formulating these descriptions I will need to make reference to the frame-based computer networking technologies classed under ethernet: Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), Wide Area Network (WAN), Personal Area Network (PAN), Campus Area Network (CAN), Local Area Network (LAN), Internetwork ie; the internet, Extranet.
is ethernet…
DSL? Yes. Fiber optic cable? Yes. T1? Yes. A virtual private network? Yes. All these standards can be classified in a general sense under Ethernet. The difference is how many computers or telephones or fax lines will be networked? Are they all in the same building? Or are they spread out over distances measured from feet to miles? Is your usage dependent upon a secure connection? A private connection? A connection that is guaranteed at a high level of bandwidth?
All these questions and many more come into play when contemplating ethernet. end of part 1.