ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Duplex mismatch

Imagine you and your friend are playing a game of telephone. You're sitting across from each other and you each have a phone to your ear. You start talking and your friend can hear you perfectly, but when they start talking, you can't hear them at all! That's what a duplex mismatch is, but instead of talking on phones, it happens with computers talking to each other.

In computer networking, duplex mode is the way data is transmitted between devices. There are two modes: full duplex and half duplex. With full duplex, two devices can talk to each other at the same time, like two people on phones chatting back and forth. With half duplex, the devices take turns transmitting data, like friends taking turns talking during a conversation.

A duplex mismatch happens when two devices are set to different duplex modes, causing communication problems. For example, if one device is set to full duplex and the other is set to half duplex, the device set to full duplex will try to transmit data to the other device while the other device is still transmitting data. This causes collisions - like when two people try to speak at the same time on the phone - and data gets lost or corrupted.

In simpler terms, a duplex mismatch is when two computers can't talk to each other properly because they're not using the same communication style. Just like when you and your friend couldn't talk on the phones because you were using different rules for the game of telephone.