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To: Curtis E. Bemis who wrote (860)	9/19/2000 12:34:48 PM
From: justone	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

Curtis: It seems I was mislead by such statements from the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance, gigabit-ethernet.org, and their FAQ: "Is Gigabit Ethernet really Ethernet? Yes. Ethernet is defined by the frame format, the use of CSMA/CD, use of full duplex, the use of flow control and the management objects defined by the IEEE 802.3 group. Gigabit Ethernet will employ all of these. Thus, it is Ethernet, only faster." and in their overview whitepaper: "Gigabit Ethernet employs the same Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) protocol, same frame format and same frame size as its predecessors" Digging deeper, it seems gigabit ethernet in full duplex mode is quite different than ethernet, in that it uses a point to point protocol, but that it is a switch to switch or switch to end node solution. Which means...that 10G ethernet is two difference protocols, depending on if you are a (low bandwidth) device or a (high bandwidth) node. ieng.com Presents this more clearly. Basically 10G ethernet is sometimes shared bandwidth ethernet and sometimes something better. Quoting from the above document. "Full-duplex transmission will be utilized in Gigabit Ethernet to increase aggregate bandwidth from 1 Gbps to 2 Gbps for point-to-point links as well as to increase the distances possible for the particular media. Additionally, Gigabit EtherChannel "bundles" will allow creation of 8 Gbps connecting between switches. The use of full-duplex Ethernet eliminates collisions on the wire; therefore, CSMA/CD need not be utilized as a flow control or access medium. However, a full-duplex flow control method has been put forward in the standards committee with flow control as on optional clause. That standard is referred to as IEEE 802.3x; it formalizes full-duplex technology and is expected to be supported in future Gigabit Ethernet products. Because of the volume of full-duplex 100-Mbps network interface cards (NICs), it is unlikely that this standard will realistically apply to Fast Ethernet." I suppose it is brilliant marketing to call it 10G ethernet, but it is really IP over MAC/point to point with backward compatibility to collision detection ethernet. I'm sure this protocol is great for big bursty data, but I'm not sure about small real-time data. All this still doesn't answer my real question. Is the last mile point to point fiber, or shared. It still seems the last mile to the home is shared. Again, if shared, it sounds like we have contention of mixed media resources in a multi-host multi-client mutli-protocol environment.