* William Case <billlinux [ at ] rogers [ dot ] com> [070516 23:29]: > Hi; > > I am trying to learn how my Network Interface Card works from the ground > up: > > Can anybody recommend a good read or detailed web site? <snip> > Hardware: How do the following work? > 1) The reception or sending of the electronic signal > 2) How is the signal created or read. googled for Ethernet electrical specification, and got this: http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/usail/external/ethernet/ethernet-guide.html http://www.techfest.com/networking/lan/ethernet.htm > 3) On a diagram or picture, where is the card's cpu, registers and other > electronics such as clocks etc. > 4) Where are the headers encoded/decoded? How? 99.9% of the time the protocol headers are constructed on the host. You want to read about TCP/IP stacks. The other 0.1% of the time you have an expensive NIC with stack offloading -- your NIC actually does some of the TCP/IP stack's job. -Bart -- WebSig: http://www.jukie.net/~bart/sig/