10BASE5

First commercially available variant of Ethernet September 2021 May 2020 thumb|upright|10BASE5 vampire tap Medium Attachment Unit (transceiver) 10BASE5 (also known as thick Ethernet or thicknet) is a version of Ethernet providing 10 Mbit/s bandwidth over a thick coaxial cable having a maximum length of 500 m ft. It was the first commercially available version of Ethernet. The technology was standardized first by Ecma International in early 1982 based on an IEEE draft standard, then by IEEE in 1983 as IEEE 802.3.Duffy Jim May 20, 2013 10 things you may not know about Ethernet https://www.networkworld.com/article/673522/lan-wan-10-things-you-may-not-know-about-ethernet.html Network World Foundry live November 27, 2025 24 May 2023 Ethernet Through the Years: Celebrating the Technology’s 50th Year of Innovation https://standards.ieee.org/beyond-standards/ethernet-50th-anniversary/ IEEE Standards Association United States IEEE 19 May 2026 Up to 100 stations can be connected to the cable in a single collision domain. The standard specifies CSMA/CD to resolve collisions. 10BASE5 was superseded by much cheaper and more convenient alternatives: first by 10BASE2 based on a thinner coaxial cable (1985), and then, once Ethernet over twisted pair was developed, by 10BASE-T (1990) and its successors 100BASE-TX and 1000BASE-T. In 2003, the IEEE 802.3 working group deprecated 10BASE5 for new installations.IEEE 802.3-2005 8. Medium attachment unit and baseband medium specifications, type 10BASE5 Name origination The name 10BASE5 is derived from several characteristics of the physical medium. The 10 refers to its transmission speed of 10 Mbit/s. The BASE is short for baseband signaling (as opposed to broadbandThe choice for broadband as the opposite is exemplified by Ethernet standards such as 10BROAD36. Later, the term broadband came to be used more commonly for different concepts, and the terms passband or modulated would be used to describe non-baseband signaling.), and the 5 stands for the maximum segment length of 500 m us.Stallings William Local and Metropolitan Area Networks 1993 Macmillan Publishing Company 0-02-415465-2 107 https://archive.org/details/localmetropolita0000stal/page/107 The physical layer Cabling and Connectors thumb|Schematic of a 10Base5 network segment For its physical layer, 10BASE5 uses cable similar to RG-8/U coaxial cable but with extra braided shield. This is a stiff, 0.4 in onBelden Product 9880 https://catalog.belden.com/techdata/EN/9880_techdata.pdf catalog.belden.com Belden 8 April 2023 diameter cable with an impedance of 50 ohms, a solid center conductor, a foam insulating filler, a shielding braid, and an outer jacket. The outer jacket is often yellow-to-orange fluorinated ethylene propylene (for fire resistance) so it often is called yellow cable, orange hose, or sometimes humorously frozen yellow garden hose.All-in-One Networking+ Certification Exam Guide Mike Meyers 3rd McGraw-Hill 2004 79 10BASE5 coaxial cables had a maximum length of 500 m us. Up to 100 nodes could be connected to a 10BASE5 segment. http://computernetworkingnotes.com/n_plus_certifications/10base_ethernet.htm 5-4-3 rule 2010-06-30 June 11, 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20100611104753/http://computernetworkingnotes.com/n_plus_certifications/10base_ethernet.htm dead Transceiver nodes can be connected to cable segments with N connectors, or via a vampire tap, which allows new nodes to be added while existing connections are live. A vampire tap clamps onto the cable, a hole is drilled through the outer shielding, and a spike is forced to pierce the outer three layers and contact the inner conductor while other spikes bite into the outer braided shield. Care is required to keep the outer shield from touching the spike; installation kits include a coring tool to drill through the outer layers and a braid pick to clear stray pieces of the outer shield. Transceivers should be installed only at precise 2.5-meter intervals. This distance was chosen to not correspond to the signal's wavelength; this ensures that the reflections from multiple taps are not in phase. IEEE Standard 802.3-1985 121 0-471-82749-5 IEEE Technical Committee on Computer Communications of the IEEE Computer Society 1985 These suitable points are marked on the cable with black bands. The cable is required to be one continuous run; T-connections are not allowed. Electrical Termination As is the case with most other high-speed buses, segments must be terminated at each end. For coaxial-cable-based Ethernet, each end of the cable has a 50 ohm resistor attached. Typically, this resistor is built into a male N connector and attached to the cable's end just past the last device. With termination missing, or if there is a break in the cable, the signal on the bus will be reflected, rather than dissipated when it reaches the end. This reflected signal is indistinguishable from a collision and prevents communication. Signaling section a description of the signaling used, which is what "Physical Layer" usually means. May 2026 Disadvantages Stations are connected to the cable using vampire taps. This complicates adding new stations to the network because of the need to pierce the cable accurately. The cable is stiff and difficult to bend around corners. One improper connection can take down the whole network and finding the source of the trouble is difficult.http://hcd.ucdavis.edu/faculty/webpages/kenney/articles_files/Sponsors,%20Communities,%20and%20Standards:%20Ethernet%20vs.%20Token%20Ring%20in%20the%20Local%20Area%20Networking%20Business.pdf Sponsors, Communities, and Standards: Ethernet vs. Token Ring in the Local Area Networking Business https://web.archive.org/web/20120618164900/http://hcd.ucdavis.edu/faculty/webpages/kenney/articles_files/Sponsors,%20Communities,%20and%20Standards:%20Ethernet%20vs.%20Token%20Ring%20in%20the%20Local%20Area%20Networking%20Business.pdf 2012-06-18 dead Urd Von Burg Martin Kenny December 2003 2012-03-25 This type of network was potentially more expensive to install and maintain than networks based on twisted pair cabling, since the latter might have already been present in sufficient quality as the phone network in office buildings.Stallings William 1993 Local and metropolitan area networks MacMillan New York 0-02-415465-2 120 https://archive.org/details/localmetropolita0000stal/page/120/mode/2up 19 May 2026 See also List of early Ethernet standards EAD-socket Notes References Category:Ethernet standards