RETURN LANs and Novell

 

The Physical Interconnection

 

The following diagram depicts the physical interconnection of a PC (Workstation) to the Ethernet LAN:

 

Functional Overview

⊕ Twisted pair cable is used as the transport media. This is known as a Type “10BASE-T” Ethernet. In these configurations, each station (PC) is connected to a central “repeater” or “hub” (Star Network). The cable length may be up to 100 meters when Category 3 cable is used.

⊕ Items C and D (MAU and AUI) are associated with a “Transceiver”, if applicable. Usually, these functions are onboard the Ethernet board in the PC and no Transceiver is required.

Typical pinouts for the RJ-45 jack are:

1 = DTE Transmit Data (+)
2 = DTE Transmit Data (-)

3 = DTE Receive Data (+)
6 = DTE Receive Data (-)

Typical Transceiver pinouts are:

 1 = Collision Shield
 2 = Collision (+)
 3 = Transmit (+)
 4 = Receive Shield
 5 = Receive (+)
 6 = Power Return
 7 = Not Used
 8 = Not Used
 9 = Collision (-)
10 = Transmit (-)
11 = Transmit Shield
12 = Receive (-)
13 
= +12 VDC
14 = Voltage Shield
15 = Not Used

⊕ Item E, the MAC (Media Access Control) function resides onboard the Ethernet card. MAC operation controls the electrical functions associated with Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA)/Collision Detection (CD) and the output/decoding of Manchester-coded 10 MBPS Ethernet HDLC frames.

A Typical Ethernet Frame

A typical Ethernet frame will look something like this: