21440 Multiport 10/100Mb/s Ethernet Controller
6-3
Network Interface Operation
6.3
MAC Frame Format
Ethernet is the generic name for the network type implementing the IEEE 802.3 Standard. An
Ethernet frame has a minimum length of 64 bytes and a maximum length of 1518 bytes, excluding
the preamble and the SFD bytes.
An Ethernet frame format consists of the following fields:
Preamble
Start frame delimiter (SFD)
Two address fields
Type or length field
Data field
Frame check sequence (CRC value)
Note:
Numbers in parentheses indicate field length in bytes.
Table 6-2
describes the Ethernet frame fields.
The CRC polynomial, as specified in the 802.3 Standard, is as follows:
FCS(X) = X
31
+X
26
+X
23
+X
22
+X
16
+X
12
+X
11
+X
10
+X
8
+X
7
+X
5
+X
4
+X
2
+X
1
+1
The 32 bits of the CRC value are placed in the FCS field so that the X31 term is the right-most bit
of the first octet. The CRC bits are thus transmitted in the following order: X31, X30,..., X1, X0.
A frame octet is transferred on the serial line from the LSB to the MSB. The octet
D
7
D
6
D
5
D
4
D
3
D
2
D
1
D
0
, where D
7
is the MSB, is transferred on the MII data signals as two
consecutive nibbles: first D
3
D
2
D
1
D
0
and then
D
7
D
6
D
5
D
4.
Preamble
SFD
Destination Address
Source Address
Type/Length
Data
FCS
(7)
(1)
(6)
(6)
(2)
(46..1500)
(4)
Table 6-2. Ethernet Frame Description
Field
Preamble
SFD (Start Frame Delimiter)
Description
A 7-byte field of alternating 1s and 0s: 10101010.
A single-byte field containing the value 10101011.
A 6-byte field containing either a specific station address, or the broadcast
address, or a multicast (logical) address, all of which indicate the frame
’
s
destination.
A 6-byte field containing the specific station address of frame origin.
A 2-byte field indicating whether the frame is in the IEEE 802.3 format or the
Ethernet format. A field greater than 1500 is interpreted as a type field, which
defines the protocol type. A field smaller than or equal to 1500 (05-DC) is
interpreted as a length field, indicating the number of data bytes in the frame.
A data field consisting of 46 to 1500 information bytes. This data field is fully
transparent because any arbitrary sequence of bits can occur. A data field
shorter than 46 bytes, specified by the length field, is allowed. In its default
mode, padding is enabled and up to 46 bytes are added to the data field by the
21440 when transmitting.
A 32-bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC), computed as a function of the
destination address field, source address field, type field, and data field. The
FCS is appended to each transmitted frame and is used during reception to
determine if the received frame is valid.
Destination address
Source address
Type/length
Data
FCS
(Frame Check Sequence)