7 November 2019

Advantages and disadvantages of ethernet

Ethernet cable is conceptually simple and easy to install, it supports quick transfer speeds and fairly affordable. Ethernet cable is difficult to troubleshoot and requires a lot of effort to reconfigurable once installed. Here this post gives information about benefits or advantages and drawbacks or disadvantages of ethernet to better understand this topic.

Benefits or advantages of ethernet

  • To form an ethernet, we do not need much. It is costless as compare to other systems of connecting computers.
  • It does not require any switches or hubs.
  • Mainatenance and administaiton are simple.
  • Ethernet is easy to maintain and troubleshoot the ethernet network.
  • All the nodes have the same privileges. It does not follow client-server architecture.
  • With the gigabit network, the user can transfer data with the speed of 1-10 Gbps.
  • The cable used to connect systems in ethernet is robust to noise and hence the quality of the connection is maintained without any degradation.
  • As it is robust to the noise, the quality of the data transfer does not degrade so the data transfer quality is good.

Drawbacks or disadvantages of ethernet

  • It offers a nondeterministic service.
  • It does not hold good for real-time applications as it requires deterministic service.
  • The ethernet network does not prioritize traffic in order to support an effective class of service. 
  • As it is designed to support real-time voice and video traffic initially it works best for traffic consisting of data solely.
  • The gigabit ethernet is still not in use at many places and hence will take time for the common man to have benefits of this ethernet version.
  • As the network cannot set priority for the packets, it is not suitable for the client-server architecture.
  • The 100 base - T4 version requires 4 pairs of wiring to support data transfer. Moreover, it can not support full-duplex data communication mode.
  • It provides connectionless communication over the network.
  • After receiving a packet the receiver will don't send any acknowledge message.
  • If you are using it for interactive applications, you have to require some dummy data to make the frame size 46B which is mandatory.
  • It is not suitable for traffic-intensive applications.
  • Ethernet is to be difficult to troubleshoot what cable or node is uses in the network causing an actual problem.


We hope that you have got a better understanding of this concept. Furthermore, any quires regarding this concept or some electrical and electronics projects give your feedback in the comment section below. 

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