Ethernet? What is it? How does it work?

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Hi there I had a few questions about ethernet.

I know enough to understand that there is such thing as an ethernet cable that you plug in into a box for Internet on your computer.

What I don’t understand is how the system itself works and if there’s more to it. Is there a box that is specific to ethernet and how is it different from your modem that you get from an Internet service provider?

I’m getting a new remote job and they are sending me an ethernet cable to ensure we have reliable internet. Is it possible that they might be sending me a cable/ethernet box as well with additional internet or is that impossible between state lines?

If it’s the later, how do you get this, do you pay by the month like your Internet service provider (ISP), and roughly how much does it cost?

Thank you in advance!

LL

In: Technology

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

In order to transmit anything from one device to another, you need to ensure both devices can understand each other. On a small scale it can be fairly easy to make that happen if you know how to. On a scale such as a city, country, or the entire planet, a system where everyone establishes their own network’s communication isn’t so effective, you end up with millions of different techniques that are ultimately unable to communicate with one another.

To avoid that problem, we landed on a single technique that would become the international standard of network communications, and that standard would be Ethernet.

Ethernet effectively just provides the groundwork protocols that ensure any 2 networked devices can communicate with and understand each other as they send data back and forth. Of course Ethernet also involves a variety of security, scalability, etc., but generally the overall workings of it are unimportant if your network is little more than a few personal devices connected to a router.

To put it simply, though, if ever you’ve used the Internet, you’ve worked with Ethernet. If you’ve ever had a home computer you plugged directly into the router, it probably used an Ethernet cable, or even if you just use wireless connections, it probably works on Ethernet protocols. If you have a router in your home, and if you have a computer in your home, both are almost guaranteed to already have Ethernet ports on them, and from there all it takes is plugging either end of the Ethernet cable into the different ports; effectively no different from plugging in a power cable, the plug goes in the hole shaped like the plug; and usually Ethernet protocols will automatically establish the necessary configurations and provide a cabled connection to the rest of the Internet with little to no extra input needed.

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