Further Explanation
The distinction between broadcast and collision domains comes about because simple Ethernet and similar systems use a shared transmission system. In simple Ethernet (without switches or bridges), data frames are transmitted to all other nodes on a network. Each receiving node checks the destination address of each frame, and simply ignores any frame not addressed to its own MAC.
Switches act as buffers, receiving and analyzing the frames from each connected network segment. Frames destined for nodes connected to the originating segment are not forwarded by the switch. Frames destined for a specific node on a different segment are sent only to that segment. Only broadcast frames are forwarded to all other segments. This reduces unnecessary traffic and collisions.
In such a switched network, transmitted frames may not be received by all other reachable nodes. Nominally, only broadcast frames will be received by all other nodes. Collisions are localized to the network segment they occur on. Thus, the broadcast domain is the entire inter-connected layer two network, and the segments connected to each switch/bridge port are each a collision domain.
Not all network systems or media feature broadcast/collision domains. For example, PPP links.
Read more about this topic: Broadcast Domain
Famous quotes containing the word explanation:
“The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.”
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846)
“To develop an empiricist account of science is to depict it as involving a search for truth only about the empirical world, about what is actual and observable.... It must involve throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature, by means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise.”
—Bas Van Fraassen (b. 1941)