16 – Installing and troubleshooting Ethernet systems

This chapter focuses on installing and troubleshooting of Ethernet systems. Network driver is one of the main components of Ethernet systems. It is a program used to provide an interface between the network card and the higher-level protocols and it spans the data link and network layers of the OSI model. It needs to match the specific hardware configuration of the network card, such as its addresses of I/O ports, control and status registers. Ethernet cards use the same IEEE 802.3 protocol so they can communicate with one another, but each needs a unique driver because of the different vendor hardware implementations. This chapter defines the functions of various types of network driver software and also describes the parameters which need to be set for a network card to function correctly. The chapter explains how network cards are configured under the plug and play and PCMCIA architectures andelaborates the uses for a protocol analyzer.