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Ethernet/802.3 Repeaters

A group of computers connected to a thin-wire (coax) Ethernet cable is called a segment, thus:
Thinwire segment
A thin wire (coaxial cable) segment has a maximum length of 185 metres, and has a few other rules as to numbers of machines, and the distance between them. The 185m segment length can be extended using a repeater[2], which behaves somewhat like a bi-directional amplifier. The resulting extended LAN acts like a single larger segment, and is referred to as a "collision domain", because every computer in each of the component segments still "sees" everyone else's tranmissions.
 
[2] a maximum of 4 repeaters is allowed between any two stations.
Lecture 13: Multiaccess Networks Copyright © 2002 P.Scott, La Trobe University Bendigo.



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