The 10BASE2 reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004
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10BASE2

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10BASE2 cable showing BNC Connector endEnlarge

10BASE2 cable showing BNC Connector end


10BASE2 cable with T-PieceEnlarge

10BASE2 cable with T-Piece


10BASE2 cable end TerminatorEnlarge

10BASE2 cable end Terminator

10BASE2 (also known as cheapernet or thinnet) is a variant of Ethernet that uses thin coaxial cable (RG-58 or similar, as opposed to 10BASE5 cable), terminated with BNC connectors. Each segment of cable is connected to the workstation using a T-piece, with one segment coming in on each arm of the T. At the physical end of the network, the T-piece attached to the workstation would require a 50-ohm terminator.


The name 10BASE2 is derived from several characteristics of the physical medium.  The 10 comes from the maximum transmission speed of 10 Mb/s (millions of bits per second). The BASE stands for baseband signalling, and the 2 represents a rounded up shorthand for the maximum segment length of 185 metres.

See also: 10BASE5, 10BASE-T, Computer network, Ethernet, Bus network



Based on material from FOLDOC, used with permission.