Physical Medium Dependent

Physical Medium Dependent sublayers or PMDs further help to define the physical layer of computer network protocols. They define the details of transmission and reception of individual bits on a physical medium. These responsibilities encompass bit timing, signal encoding, interacting with the physical medium, and the properties of the cable, optical fiber, or wire itself. Common examples are specifications for Fast Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

For cable modems Physical Medium Dependent sublayers define the physical sub-layer which also includes the MPEG sub-layer.

The Ethernet PMD sublayer is part of the Ethernet physical layer (PHY). The hierarchy is as follows:

After these specifications have been laid out, they are then completed with local area network and wide area network specifications using different Physical Coding Sublayer standards.

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