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11 100Base Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet

100Base Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet are today’s 100 and 1,000 Mbps variants of the Ethernet protocol, respectively. Although similar to 10Base Ethernet in many ways, the 100Base protocols have some configuration issues that you must be aware of in order to design, install, and administer the networks that use them.

100Base Ethernet

The IEEE 802.3u specification, ratified in 1995, defined what is commonly known as 100Base Ethernet, a data link layer protocol running at 100 Mbps, which is ten times the speed of the original Ethernet protocol. This is now the industry standard for many new installations, largely because it improves network performance so much while changing so little.

100Base ...

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