Cisco Certified Network

Associate (CCNA)
Ethernet LAN Switching By Odoch Herbert
HYPER SOLUTIONS
Layer 1/Physical Layer(OSI Model)
• With interfaces, we were mainly determined on Layer 1, lets have a
brief look at layer 1 activities and services.
• It defines the physical characteristics of the medium used to transfer
data between services e.g. voltage levels, maximum transmission
distances, physical connectors, cable specifications etc.
• Digital bits (PDUs at Layer 1) are converted into electrical(for wired
connections) or radio(for wireless connections) signals.
• All of information related to cables or other links/physical is related to
the physical layer.
Datalink Layer
• When it comes to Ethernet LAN Switching, the main layer for discussion is
the Datalink layer(Layer 2).
• Provides node-to-node connectivity and data transfer(e.g. for example PC to
Switch, switch to router, router to router).
• Defines how data is formatted for transmission over a physical medium(at
sender).
• Detects and possibly corrects physical Layer errors(at receiver).
• Uses Layer 2 addressing, separate from Layer 3 addressing.
• Swiches operate at Layer 2.
NB: LAN normally consists of a switch connecting two or more devices.
Encapsulation and De-encapsulation
• Consider the OSI Model below. • 1, 2, 3 , 4 and 5 are called
PDUs(Protocol Data Units) and they
• ppic differ for every layer from the session
layer to the physical layer due to a
process called encapsulation.
• Encapsulation is the process of
addition of information inform of
headers or trailers at each layer of a
network model. Th e opposite which is
retrieving the original payload for each
layer by removing the headers or
trailers is called de-encapsulation.
Encapsulation and De-encapsulation

Process of Encapsulation Process of De-encapsulation

• Once information has been prepared by the upper layers
inform of Data, it is sent down the stack.
• At the transport layer, the data is broken into segments
and each of the segments is assigned a header containing
the port address for the purpose of host to host
communication. MTU
• At the Network layer, a header(IP Header) is added which
contains the IP address information. The resulting name
for each of the encapsulated segments is called a packet.
• At the Datalink layer, to each packet, an Ethernet trailer
and header is added resulting to a PDU called a frame.
• At the Physical layer, the frames are converted into
bits(PDU) for the purpose of transmission depending on
the medium.
Ethernet Frame
• pic
Preamble
• Length: 7 bytes(56 bits)
• Consists of alternating 1’s and 0’s i.e. 10101010*7.
• Allows Devices to synchronize their receiver clocks.
SFD(Start Frame Delimiter)
• Length: 1 byte(8 bits)
• Consists of alternating 1’s and 0’s but always ends with 1 i.e.
10101011.
• Marks the end of the preamble and the beginning of the rest of the
frame

• NB: Preamble + SFD

=1010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101
010101011
Destination and Source
• They indicate the devices’ sending and receiving the Frame .
• Consist o f destination and source MAC Addresses respectively.
• MAC= Media Access Control.
• MAC Address is a 6 byte (48 bit) address of the physical device.
Type/length
• It is a 2 byte(16 bit) Field.
• In this field, a value of 1500(MTU value in bytes) or less indicates the
length of the encapsulated packet in bytes and a value of 1536 or
greater indicates the type of the encapsulated packet( usually IPv4 or
IPv6) and the length is determined via other methods.
• IPv4 =0X800(hex)/2048(decimal)
• IPv6 = 0X86DD(hex)/ 34525(decimal)
Type/length
• With that we are done with the parts of the Ethernet Header, all in all
the size of the Ethernet header is 22 bytes(22*8 bits).
Ethernet Trailer/ Frame Check Sequence
• 4 bytes(32 bits) in length.
• Detects corrupted data by running a ‘CRC’ algorithm over received
data. CRC is Cyclic Redundancy (a method for checking errors)

• NB: All in all , the header and trailer of the frame has 26 bytes.