IP Routing Fundamentals

LAN Technologies

As explained in Chapter 2, "Understanding Internetwork Addresses," routers are an indispensable part of the LAN. Therefore, it is not surprising that most router vendors offer I/O ports for virtually all the most common physical implementations of today's LANs. Some of the more commonly encountered LAN architectures include Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI, and ATM.

Of course, numerous other LAN architectures abound, including such esoteric networks as Token Bus, ARCnet, and even ARCnet Plus. It is highly unlikely that you will ever encounter them, however; they have long since passed into obsolescence. It is important to note that even the LAN architectures examined in this chapter may have some physical layer specifications that ...