1) A trademark for a LAN protocol.

2) A local area network first described by Metcalfe & Boggs of Xerox PARC in 1976. Specified by DEC, Intel and XEROX (DIX) as IEEE 802.3 and now recognised as the industry standard.

Data is broken into packets and each one is transmitted using the CSMA/CD algorithm until it arrives at the destination without colliding with any other packet. The first contention slot after a transmission is reserved for an acknowledge packet. A node is either transmitting or receiving at any instant. The bandwidth is about 10 Mbit/s. Disk-Ethernet-Disk transfer rate with TCP/IP is typically 30 kilobyte per second.

Version 2 specifies that collision detect of the transceiver must be activated during the inter-packet gap and that when transmission finishes, the differential transmit lines are driven to 0V (half step). It also specifies some network management functions such as reporting collisions, retries and deferrals.

Ethernet cables are classified as "XbaseY", e.g. 10base5, where X is the data rate in Mbps, "base" means "baseband" (as opposed to radio frequency) and Y is the category of cabling. The original cable was 10base5 ("full spec"), others are 10base2 ("thinnet") and 10baseT ("twisted pair") which is now (1998) very common. 100baseT ("Fast Ethernet") is also increasingly common.

A massive dump that takes 10 to 15 times to flush.

(n) Something used to catch the Etherbunny.

When there is no WIFI...

Ethernet is friggen cabling! Most often referred to as Cat-5 or Cat-5e, most Ethernet is a set of four pairs of twisted wire used in the transfer of data, usually terminated by a RJ-45 connector and used in a 10/100/1000 local area network.

Something that is used to play Xbox online.

What you wish was there to catch you when you pass out
at your computer desk and fall out of your chair!