On Friday 03 June 2005 11:05 am, Gerald Combs wrote:
I certainly understand your points, and would agree, with one exception:
Limiting Ethernet to a $10 five port hub is an artifical (and unrealistic) distinction.
It may be artificial, but when the _average_ user/low-level tech talks about "ethernet", they mean whatever they can jack into the RJ45 in the wall or perhaps a hub/switch in the closet. The vast majority of "ethernet jacks" are of this limited nature.
This is relevant to the original question, which was whether one could just plug a hub (or NIC) in to the CSU/DSU and expect to be able to "see" the traffic on it. For the purpose of that discussion, I'm not sure even gigabit ethernet would count.
There's always been a gap between what the average consumer/user had access to at reasonable cost and what could technically be done within the scope of an engineering standard. (This can be very frustrating when you're doing a home project on a limited budget and you discover what those little extra features within the standard actually cost to implement.)