That's not what I meant.  In no sense can the ethernet encoding be viewed as
bits on the wire.  There is no simple explanation, but basically the
interpretation of the signal on the wire depends on the history of the signal.

On 21-Jan-2003 Chris Gray wrote:
> On Tuesday 21 January 2003 01:13, seth@cql.com wrote:
>> Certainly not 1/8 of a byte.  If you look at the encoding on an ethernet
>> line you will see what I mean.
>>
>> On 20-Jan-2003 Chris Gray wrote:
>> > On Monday 20 January 2003 22:27, seth@cql.com wrote:
>> >> "Non-integer number of bytes" doesn't make sense.  There is no such
>> >> thing as a fraction of a byte.
>> >
>> > Then what is a bit, if not 1/8 of a byte?
> 
> True, ethernet is byte-oriented at the MAC layer (in all the 802.x I've 
> seen), but it's still bits that go on the wire.  There are other datalink 
> control layers which will quite happily convey a PDU of 37 bits if that's 
> what you want them to do.
> 
> Now non-integral numbers of angels dancing on the point of a needle, that's 
> another matter. ;>
> 
> Sorry for the noise
> 
> Chris

-- 
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Seth Kurtzberg
M. I. S. Corp.
E-Mail: seth@cql.com
Date: 21-Jan-2003
Time: 12:40:37

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