10BASE2
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10BASE2 (also known as cheapernet or thinnet) is a variant of Ethernet that uses thin coaxial cable (RG-58 or similar, as opposed to 10BASE5 cable), terminated with BNC connectors. Each segment of cable is connected to the workstation using a BNC T-connector, with one segment connected to each arm of the T. At the physical end of the network, the T-connector attached to the workstation requires a 50-ohm terminator.
When wiring a 10base2 network, special care has to be taken to insure that cables are properly connected to all T-connectors, and appropriate terminators are installed. Bad contacts or shorts are especially difficult to diagnose, though special (and costly) measurement devices are available. A failure at any point of the network cabling tends to prevent all communications. For this reason, 10base2 networks were a bit difucult to maintain and were often replaced by 10BASE-T networks, which also provided a good upgrade path to 100BASE-TX.
The name 10BASE2 is derived from several characteristics of the physical medium. The 10 comes from the maximum transmission speed of 10 Mbit/s (millions of bits per second). The BASE stands for baseband signalling, and the 2 represents a rounded up shorthand for the maximum segment length of 185 metres.
See also
- 10BASE5 (thicknet)
- 10BASE-T
- Computer network
- Ethernet
- Bus network
References
- This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.