Quick Reference Guide to 10BASE5 Thick Ethernet

3.3 10BASE5 Configuration Guidelines

The five components described in this chapter are all that's needed to build a single thick Ethernet cable segment with a maximum length of 500 meters, which can support up to 100 MAU attachments.

If you wish to combine multiple segments, the multi-segment configuration rules in the IEEE standard require that the media segments be connected together with Ethernet repeaters. A repeater is a signal amplifying and retiming device that keeps the system operating correctly by cleaning up the signals that it repeats from one segment to the other. The repeater also has circuits that ensure that collision signals that occur on any segment are propagated onto all other segments to which the repeater is attached.

By doing this the repeater makes all segments function as though they were a single big segment, or what is known as a single Ethernet "collision domain." This makes it possible for computers attached to any segment in a system of Ethernet segments linked with repeaters to hear the same signals and to operate as a single LAN channel.

A thick coaxial segment is formally known as a "mixing segment" in the multi-segment configuration guidelines. A mixing segment is defined as one which may have more than two MDI connections. As we've just seen, a given segment of thick coaxial cable can support up to 100 such connections. This distinguishes it from a link segment, which has only one connection at each end.

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