How do you wire up Ethernet electrically without a switch? An approximately equivalent phrasing of this question would be what is going on electrically inside an Ethernet Hub?
To clarify, I'm not trying to connect two computers here. I'm thinking specifically of creating a small network of microcontrollers on a single board. Can it be done without a switch or a hub through just electrical connections. This would be for 10BaseT or at most 100BaseT.
Answer
Ethernet 10baseT can work with a pure hub: just connecting all the wires together suitably, with very minimal electronics. This often also requires disabling cable autodetection and things on the communicating device side for modern cards.
Ethernet 100baseT and anything even relatively modern requires an actual switch even for "hubs" - a microcontroller and each port controlled separately.
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