Collision (telecommunications)

Have you ever played bumper cars at an amusement park? When you're driving around, you try to avoid bumping into other cars because it could damage the cars or hurt the people inside.

In telecommunications, "collision" means that two or more electronic signals are trying to travel through the same space at the same time, like bumper cars trying to go through the same doorway at the same time. When this happens, the signals run into each other and can interfere with each other, causing errors or lost information.

To prevent collisions, devices in a telecommunications network use something called "collision detection". It's like having bumper cars that can sense when another bumper car is approaching the same doorway and then waiting for the other car to go through first before going themselves.

In telecommunications, when devices detect that another device is using the same space as them, they wait before trying to send their own signals. This helps prevent collisions and ensures that all the signals can get through the network without running into each other.