Fast Ethernet

In computer networking, Fast Ethernet physical layers carry traffic at the nominal rate of 100 Mbit/s. The prior Ethernet speed was 10 Mbit/s. Of the Fast Ethernet physical layers, 100BASE-TX is by far the most common. Fast Ethernet was introduced in 1995 as the IEEE 802.3u standard and remained the fastest version of Ethernet for three years before the introduction of Gigabit Ethernet. The acronym GE/FE is sometimes used for devices supporting both standards. The "100" in the media type designation refers to the transmission speed of 100 Mbit/s, while the "BASE" refers to baseband signaling. The letter following the dash ("T" or "F") refers to the physical medium that carries the signal (twisted pair or fiber, respectively), while the last character ("X", "4", etc.) refers to the line code method used. Fast Ethernet is sometimes referred to as 100BASE-X, where "X" is a placeholder for the FX and TX variants. Fast Ethernet is an extension of the 10-megabit Ethernet standard. It runs on twisted pair or optical fiber cable in a star wired bus topology, similar to the IEEE standard 802.3i called 10BASE-T, itself an evolution of 10BASE5 (802.3) and 10BASE2 (802.3a). Fast Ethernet devices are generally backward compatible with existing 10BASE-T systems, enabling plug-and-play upgrades from 10BASE-T. Most switches and other networking devices with ports capable of Fast Ethernet can perform autonegotiation, sensing a piece of 10BASE-T equipment and setting the port to 10BASE-T half duplex if the 10BASE-T equipment cannot perform auto negotiation itself. The standard specifies the use of CSMA/CD for media access control. A full-duplex mode is also specified and in practice, all modern networks use Ethernet switches and operate in full-duplex mode, even as legacy devices that use half duplex still exist. A Fast Ethernet adapter can be logically divided into a media access controller (MAC), which deals with the higher-level issues of medium availability, and a physical layer interface (PHY).