Actually I thought it could be set up like a cb radio. You would have
a certain number of "channels" or different frequencies running across the
same wire, like broadband has "channels" as well going over coax. Each
host "ethernet" card would have a certain number of channels they
communicate on. When a host on the network wishes to talk to another host
on the network, the card would transmit on the lowest open channel
available. Upon detection that there is a transmission on that channel,
all the cards in the other machines simply put a "lock" on that
channel. That allows those two machines to communicate with each other
without interruption. If any other hosts on the network need to
communicate, their "ethernet" cards find the lowest open channel and
transmit on that channel. Anytime any host wants to communicate with
another, it simply picks the lowest channel available. If all hosts on the
netword agree on that protocol, it would be very simple and not too
complex or time consuming. I tried drawing a simple map of possibilities
in hosts communicating across the network, and couldn't come up with a way
there would be conflicts.

   Another nice thing about this is it would prevent ping attacks. If your
machine is being pinged to death, you could go to the multi channel card
and put a lock on the channel your card is on, and simply open another
lowest channel. You would have a lot more freedom.










On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Philip C Mendelsohn wrote:

> On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Jamie Ostrowski wrote:
> 
> > Is it possible to modulate each of the hosts's transmissions on the
> > subnet so that each host is transmitting at a different frequency on
> > the same line? If you could do that, all the hosts could talk at the
> > same time to the router without signals bumping into one another if
> > they are all talking at a different frequency. Wouldn't this
> > significantly increase the amount of speed that a host could operate
> > on if we didn't have to worry about contention?
> 
> There's no free lunch; what you suggest (if I understand correctly) is
> trading time slices of a broadband transmission for frequency slices of a
> time-continuous transmission.  I think the horses mouth here would 
> be Shannon and those old chestnuts.  
> 
> Thing is, each host would have limited bandwidth.  You'd have to make sure
> that in doing so, each host had all the bandwidth that it previously had
> before, which means designing a new transmission system with higher
> bandwidth than you had previously.  There's no difference between a
> transmission system that goes faster and one that goes wider -- think of
> it as an area problem.  Pulling on one side shortens the other.
> 
> Anyway, now you're getting back into analog electronics -- impedances,
> freq response, etc...  Fun stuff, but not really what you were hoping to
> do, I think.
> 
> HTH,
> Phil M
> 
> 

-- 

   "It's pretty hard to stop a man who eats his toast every morning."