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I heard that the minimum frame size of an Ethernet packet is determined by how long it takes for a collision to occur. It has to be large enough so that if a collision occurs it will be detected before the transmission is completed.
However, consider this case: What if the transmission of a packet is almost completed. The sender is about to send the last byte when a collision all the way at the other end occurs. Will the collision be detected or not? Making the Ethernet packet long doesn't seem to make any difference.
here's a nice writeup about how the minimum frame size is calculated - http://bharathi.posterous.com/minimum-ethernet-framepacket-size
– freethinker – 2011-05-19T15:27:53.527