🚀 go-pugleaf

I don't have any information on other repeater vendors, but I gather
that the DEC Ethernet repeater is advertised NOT to eat any preamble 
bits.  It does, of course, contribute to the propagation delay budget
as the Ethernet spec. allows.  This would seem to imply that an
Ethernet using only DEC repeaters could comfortably have more than
2 repeaters between a pair of nodes if the maximum cable distance
between nodes was suitably reduced.  For example, consider the 
following topology which violates the spec in various ways:

		( 500m Ethernet backbone)
----------------------------------------------------------------
  R                          R                               R
  |(500m seg)                |building 2           (500m seg)|
building 1                   |                           building 3
                   (500m seg)|           building 4
                    ________/R---------------------

The fact that the repeater for building 2 is in the middle of the
backbone Ethernet would seem to imply that the delay budget for
the repeater connecting to building 4 can be safely ignored.

Of course, in practice you would have to figure the delay budget
carefully to make sure everything worked.  The advantage of the
Ethernet spec as written is partially that it is fairly simple --
you don't have to calculate delay budgets between every possible
pair of nodes.  Since configuring an Ethernet is already a complex
undertaking, making it still more complex by permitting some but
not all configurations of multiple repeaters seems like a dangerous
idea.