Interpacket gap

In computer networking, a minimal pause may be required between network packets or network frames. Depending on the physical layer protocol or encoding used, the pause may be necessary to allow for receiver clock recovery, permitting the receiver to prepare for another packet (e.g. powering up from a low-power state) or another purpose.

Ethernet devices must allow a minimum idle period between transmission of Ethernet packets known as the interpacket gap (IPG), interframe spacing, or interframe gap (IFG). A brief recovery time between packets allows devices to prepare for reception of the next packet. While some physical layer variants literally transmit nothing during the idle period, most modern ones transmit a constant signal and send idle symbols. The standard minimum interpacket gap for transmission is 96 bit times (the time it takes to transmit 96 bits of raw data on the medium), which is

Some manufacturers design adapters with a smaller interpacket gap for slightly higher data transfer rates, which can lead to a high rate of detected collisions. An example is Intel EtherExpress 100B.

On reception, some interpacket gaps may be smaller due to variable network delays, clock tolerances, and the presence of repeaters (10 and 1000 Mbit/s only).

For Fibre Channel, there is a sequence of between successive frames, sometimes called interframe gap as well. The minimum sequence consists of six primitives, IDLE|IDLE|R_RDY|R_RDY|IDLE|IDLE. Each primitive consists of four channel words of 10 bits each for 8b/10b encoded variants (1–8 Gbit/s), equivalent to four data bytes.

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