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> And now I'm trying to recall why Ethernet transceivers were necessary I think the idea was to decouple the card that went inside the computer from the physic
by Kadin 7y ago
> And now I'm trying to recall why Ethernet transceivers were necessary
I think the idea was to decouple the card that went inside the computer from the physical media. You could use the same card for 10BASE5 or 10BASE2 or even 10BASE-T based on the building wiring.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_Unit_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_Unit_Interface
- Godel_unicode 7y agoModern datacenter switches are still this way, see SFP+/QSFP.
- eropple 7y agoNot just for that, though it's important--as I understand it, the electronics needed to feed data at high rates over RJ-45 are actually surprisingly difficult. Going much over 10Gbit (currently expensive) over RJ-45 is going to be prohibitive.
- toast0 7y agoThe decoupling was nice to have, but i've gathered that the bigger issue was 10base5 cabling was big and inflexible, and connecting to it was a bit of a chore, it was kind of necessary to have a flexible cable between the computer and the tap. 10base2 had a much more flexible cable, and allowed for T's, so it wasn't too bad to route it right to the computer, and 10baseT was also routed to the computer. So after 10base5 was pretty well dead, budget cards lost the transceiver port, although fiber transceivers were useful in niche cases -- if you needed one, you'd have to more carefully select your ethernet card.