Ethernet is a widely deployed technology and is a reference in the networking world. It has many standards associated with it, depending on the type of media used (i.e., copper, fiber, or wireless) and speed (e.g., 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps, or 10Gbps). Older Ethernet standards were based on coaxial cables but this is not the case in modern networks. The most important Ethernet standards are as follows:
- 10BaseT
- 100BaseT
- 1000BaseT
- 100BaseTX
- 100BaseFX
- 1000BaseX
- 10GBaseSR
- 10GBaseLR
- 10GBaseER
- 10GBaseSW
- 10GBaseLW
- 10GBaseEW
- 10GBaseT
CSMA/CD and CSMA/CA are common acronyms in the networking world. The CS in CSMA stands for Carrier Sense and this means that the device that will be communicating on the network is listening to determine whether some other station is transmitting on the medium. If that is the case, it will not transmit over the already existing signal. The MA in CSMA stands for Multiple Access and this means that there is more than one device on the network that might be trying to communicate at the same time.
The CD in CSMA/CD stands for Collision Detection. An Ethernet collision happens when two stations send a signal on the wire at the same time and the signals collide so no one on the network can understand any of the signals.
With CSMA/CA, the CA stands for Collision Avoidance, which is a different concept than Collision Detection in that the stations are now trying to avoid any kind of collision instead of simply detecting it. This is commonly used on wireless networks because a wireless device cannot hear whether communication is occurring between other stations at a specific moment (thus, it cannot use CD).
Switches do not separate broadcast domains, routers do. If a switch receives a frame with a Broadcast destination address, then it must forward it out of all ports, apart from the port the frame was received on. A router is required to separate broadcast domains.