Transmission Media

Transmission Media

It is a material substance as cables or wires which propagate energy waves. These are used to connect computers or other devices in a network. There are many types of cables used with LAN as :

Coaxial Cable- Coaxial cable or Coax is a type of cable that has an inner conductor surrounded by insulating layer and enclosed by conducting shield. It is used  as a transmission line for radio frequency signals. It is difficult too install coaxial cabling.

Types :-

Thick coaxial-  Thick coaxial cable also referred to as thicknet. 10Base5 is the specification of coaxial cable carrying ethernet signals. It has extra protective plastic cover.

Thin coaxial- Thin coaxial cable is also referred to as thinnet.10Base2 refers to the specification for thin coaxial cable carrying ethernet signals. It is popular in school networks.

BNC Connector is used with coaxial cables.

Twisted Pair Cable- It is a type of cabling in which conductors of single circuit are twisted together for cancelling out electromagnetic interference from external source.

Types:-

1.     STP(Shielded Twisted Pair Cable)- It is suitable for environments with electrical interference . STP is used on networks using Token ring Topology.

2.     UTP(Unshielded Twisted Pair Cable)- It is most popular and it is best option for school networks. It contains four twisted-pairs(Orange, Green, Blue, Brown).It is basically used for networking applications.

The standard connector for UTP cabling is an RJ-45.

Crossover Cable- It is used to connect same type of devices as:

Computer to computers directly

switche to Switch , hub to hub, pc to hub

Both sides of a cable have different wire arrangement.

Straight Cable- It is used to connect different type of devices as

Connect a computer to switch/hub

Connect a router to a switch/hub

Both sides of a cable have wire arrangement with same color.

Straight Cable is mainly used in networking.

Rollover cable- It is used to connect a computer terminal to a router’s console port. It gets name rollover as pinouts on one end are reserved from the other.

This cable is not used in these days.