baker@VITAM6.UUCP (Fred Baker) (10/13/89)
The following is from IEEE 802.3 section 4.4.2.1. Ethernet V1 and V2 make similar statements. the 'attemptLimit' is 16, which on the LANCE especially and I believe also the 825X6 is implemented in silicon. You try 10 times, increasing the backoff each time, try five times using the same maximum backoff, and then QUIT. the chips also give you some rudimentary TDR data upon an access failure. Our experience: if you see 16 successive collisions on the same message, you will see 16 gazillion if you keep trying. The net is broken, go fix it. Fred Baker baker@vitalink.com