solarwind wrote:
> Hey all! So far I am considering the RS485 bus for my inter-controller
> communication system. That's because I understand how RS485 works.
> It's simple and very very flexible.
Seems like a good choice, simple and cheap, can run long distances as 
long as you make sure it's terminated right and fast enough for most 
microcontroller applications.

>  However it seems that ethernet is
> another interesting option. 
It's good from a performance point of view but it is also far more 
complex to work with and requires quite a bit of hardware at each node 
(you need a dedicated controller chip and you need the magnetics and a 
load of other passives).
> I tried to do more research on it but I
> didn't get very far. (Probably because I wasn't searching for the
> right thing.)
>
> Anyway, my question is: can ethernet be used as a BUS? Like RS485,
> that is - without a hub or switch. I want to be able to hook up
> several microcontrollers with Microchip's ENC26J60 together. Is it
> possible to tie them together in a bus fashion? Or is a
> hub/switch/router required?
>   
Old-school coaxial 10BASE5 and 10BASE2 ethernet was a bus network. 
10BASE-T is point to point only so you need a hub/switch if you want 
more than two nodes. The ENC28J60 is 10BASE-T only.


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