g way over coaxial cable. Thus, older, 10Base-2/ 10Base-5 Ethernet LANs could daisy chain devices together to support an entire building or a campus. Some older Ethernet LANs supported as many as 300 devices. The problem with this approach (in addition to the obvious congestion implications) was that if any node had a problem (e.g., a bad cable connection or a faulty network adapter) it brought down the entire network. In 1990, the introduction of 10Base-T Ethernet (also known as IEEE 802.3i) eliminated the need for coaxial cable altogether. Instead, it relies on unshielded twisted pair (UTP), using only two of the four pair of wires found in most UTP cable. 10Base-T is arranged in a star-hub topology, much as voice stations connect to a PBX. Hubs, which reside in floor-level equipment closets, are equipped with port. These ports are wired to individual nodes on a network. Data packets enter a hub through a single port and exit through all ports. Wireless networking is now doing to 10Base-T (and its faster siblings), what 10Base-T did to coaxial cable. As the various wireless Ethernet technologies get faster and more reliable, wire will increasingly exist only in the network core. PCs will shed the RJ-48 jack, but the distances involved in large campus and carrier networks (not to mention scarcity of spectrum in the unlicensed bands) are likely to ensure that wire has a place for in the near future. However, inclusion of Gigabit Ethernet NICs in PCs is likely to decelerate the adoption of slower wireless networks. How can one adapt a best-effort network infrastructure (that was designed for printing) to video communication and other bit-intensive multimedia applications? Because there is SO much of it installed, the question is an important one, and one with countless answers. ADAPTING ETHERNET FOR STREAMING MEDIA LAN Microsegmentation As applications become more demanding, network managers may divide LANs into smaller segments in an approach known as microsegmentation. Whereas a LAN might have supported 64 devic