Abracon Releases New Application Note About Ethernet Solutions

AUSTIN, TX – Abracon, LLC (Abracon), a leading global manufacturer of frequency control, timing, synchronization, RF, connectivity, and power component solutions, announces the release of a new application note titled "Abracon Ethernet Solutions: Understanding Ethernet Magnetics Features and Design Considerations."

Please read the excerpt below:

“There are not many technologies that exist today that have the longevity of Ethernet. The communications technology dates back to the 1970s and was invented by Xerox. It wasn’t until the 1980’s the IEEE standards group ratified the specification and it began to be widely adopted by the industry. In fact, by the 1990’s there was a very large installed base of equipment and more importantly the large cabling infrastructure.

Fast-Ethernet (100Mbs) was ratified in the mid 1990’s which only strengthened Ethernet adoption and cabling infrastructure. As a result, formidable competitive technologies, like Token Ring, never came to fruition. Token Ring (IEEE802.5) had a few disadvantages, one of which was cost. Token Ring hardware cost was higher and adoption for an existing Ethernet network would require a full redesign of the cabling infrastructure. Another disadvantage was solely due to Token Ring network cabling topology. Since the network nodes were in a ring configuration, if one node failed or went offline unexpectedly, the whole subnetwork would go down. How does the network administrator determine which node is faulty when the whole network is down?

Today, Ethernet is still the most cost effective solution and twisted-pair copper cabling remains cheaper than fiber optics. Twisted-pair copper cabling, which is the physical medium for all Base-T standards, is still used today supporting data rates of 10Gpbs. Nodes are point-to-point such that they connect into a a central hub/switch independently (star configuration). Keep in mind, every standard supported by the IEEE committee is backward compatible to all previous standards. Meaning, the latest 10GBase-T hardware is compatible with the same fast-Ethernet cabling and hardware from the 1990s.

Designing an IEEE compliant interface is not a trivial task. This publication is intended to help the designer by highlighting important features of the circuitry between the PHY and cable which includes the magnetic isolation and filtering and the RJ45 connector."

Read the full application note here.