Layer 1 just understands bits. Hardware, in general, understands voltage and no voltage (one or zero). I guess it could understand high voltage and low voltage. In fact, there's even ternary systems that understand high, kinda high, and low.
Back in the early days, software engineers got kind of sick of having to deal with long streams of numbers and decided to aggregate them. An 8-bit byte worked out for many systems. (There used to be systems that used a 12-bit byte). So anything that is implemented in software (or software that has become firmware) uses bytes or perhaps nibbles or words. Most NICs that handle data-link-layer processes have some software (driver) or firmware (chip set). Thus, I would say that they deal with bytes or nibbles or words or floating integers or arrays or link lists or symbol tables or at least something of a higher order than voltage being present or not. Priscilla At 07:12 PM 2/26/02, you wrote: >Is conversion of bits into bytes and vice versa a function of Layer 1 or >Layer 2? > >I have seen contradictory info. > >(I would say it is a layer 2 function because Layer 1 is only physical >matters like voltage etc... but some one may have a logic to prove me wrong) > > >thanks, > >Pierre-Alex ________________________ Priscilla Oppenheimer http://www.priscilla.com Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=36578&t=36562 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
