Ethernet was developed in the late 1970's by the Xerox Corporation at their Palo Alto Research Centre in California. It has been estimated that over 70% of the worlds networks use the Ethernet protocol, so with this in mind it would seem only sensible to discuss how it works. If you would like to buy books on this subject, have a look at the Network Cabling Help.
When a device connected to an Ethernet network wants to send data it first checks to make sure it has a carrier on which to send its data
This means that all machines on the network are free to use the network whenever
A means of ensuring that when two machines start to transmit data simultaneously, that the resultant corrupted data is discarded, and re-transmissions are generated at differing time intervals