Under what circumstances can/will a 10BASE-T device slow down a 100BASE-T or faster network?

Posted by Fred Hamilton on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Fred Hamilton
Published on 2010-03-23T20:53:47Z Indexed on 2010/03/23 21:03 UTC
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10base-t

Suppose I have a 10BASE-T device, but everything else on my network is 100BASE-T or faster. When I attach the 10Mbit device, one of two things could happen:

It could be passed through as 10BASE-T, making whatever it's connected to slow down to 10BASE-T, or
It could be converted to a higher speed.

I'm looking for all the plausible examples where #1 could happen; where attaching this 10Mbit device will slow down other traffic. I sorta think it can't happen - that as soon as it comes into contact with other traffic it has to get retimed to be inserted into the higher rate traffic (so no slowdown aside from the extra bits from the connection), and that when it's not contacting other traffic, who cares if it's only 10Mbit?

Basically I'd like a better understanding of any impact of inserting a slow device into a fast ethernet network.

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