WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF CABLE?

A. Twisted Pair 

Twisted pair is the ordinary copper wire that connects home and many business computers to the telephone company. Twisted pair comes with each pair uniquely color coded when it is packaged in multiple pairs. The wire you buy at a local hardware store for extensions from your phone or computer modem to a wall jack is not twisted pair. It is a side-by-side wire known as silver satin. Two different types of twisted pair cable, unshielded twisted pair (UTP) and shielded twisted pair (STP) are used in different kinds of installations.

                               

  a. Shielded Twisted Pair   

                      Shielded twisted pair is a special kind of copper telephone wiring used in some business installations. An outer covering or shield is added to the ordinary twisted pair telephone wires; the shield functions as a ground. STP is similar to unshielded twisted pair (UTP); however, it contains an extra foil wrapping or copper braid jacket to help shield the cable signals from interference. STP cables are costlier when compared to UTP, but has the advantage of being capable of supporting higher transmission rates across longer distances.

  

b. Unshielded Twisted Pair

               Unshielded twisted pair (UTP) is a ubiquitous type of copper cabling used in telephone wiring and local area networks (LANs). Unshielded means no additional shielding like meshes or aluminum foil, which add bulk, are used. UTP cables are often groups of twisted pairs grouped together with color coded insulators, the number of which depends on the purpose. They are typically used in computer networking such as Ethernet for short-to-medium distances because of their relatively cheap price compared to optical fiber and coaxial cables.

B. Coaxial

Coaxial cable is a type of copper cable specially built with a metal shield and other components engineered to block signal interference. It is primarily used by cable TV companies to connect their satellite antenna facilities to customer homes and businesses. It is also sometimes used by telephone companies to connect central offices to telephone poles near customers. Coaxial cable received its name because it includes one physical channel that carries the signal surrounded.

C. Fiber Optic

Fiber optics, or optical fiber, refers to the medium and the technology associated with the transmission of information as light pulses along a glass or plastic strand or fiber. A fiber optic cable can contain a varying number of these glass fibers -- from a few up to a couple hundred. Surrounding the glass fiber core is another glass layer called cladding. A layer known as a buffer tube protects the cladding, and a jacket layer acts as the final protective layer for the individual strand.

A straight through cable is a type of twisted pair cable that is used in local area networks to connect a computer to a network hub such as a router. This type of cable is also sometimes called a patch cable and is an alternative to wireless connections where one or more computers access a router through a wireless signal. On a straight through cable, the wired pins match. Straight through cable use one wiring standard. While the crossover cable is a type of Ethernet cable used to connect computing devices together directly. Unlike straight through cable, crossover cables use two different wiring standards: one end uses the T568A wiring standard, and the other end uses the T568B wiring standard. The internal wiring of Ethernet crossover cables reverses the transmit and receive signals.

source:

fiberoptic.com

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