Quick Reference Guide to 10BASE5 Thick Ethernet

3.4 Thick Coaxial Physical Topology

In Chapter 1 we saw that the logical topology of an Ethernet signalling system is a non-rooted branching tree, which describes how segments may be connected together. There is also a physical topology for each segment type, which describes how each segment type used in an Ethernet system can be physically connected to stations.

Thick coaxial segments can only be connected in the bus cable form of physical topology. In the bus cable topology, all stations are attached to a single coaxial cable that provides an electrical signal bus that is common to all stations and carries signals between all stations.

FIGURE 3.2 Thick Ethernet bus cable topology

One problem with the bus cabling topology is that a failure anywhere on the thick coaxial cable disrupts the electrical bus and therefore disrupts the operation of all computers attached to the cable. A star-wired cabling topology can make it much easier to limit the effect of cabling problems, as shown in the next several chapters.

Quick Reference Guide to 10BASE5 Thick Ethernet - 04 SEP 95

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