3.2a - Network Cables: Professor Messer

Network Cables

Copper

Categories

• Include wires such as:

  • Category 5 (Cat 5): Uses the 1000BASE-T (1Gbit/s) ethernet standard, with a supporting distance of up to 100 meters.

  • Category 5 enhanced (Cat 5e): Uses the 1000BASE-T (1Gbit/s) ethernet standard, with a supporting distance of up to 100 meters.

  • Category 6 (Cat 6): Uses the 10GBASE-T (10 Gbit/s) ethernet standard, with a supporting distance of up to 55 meters (unshielded) or 100 meters (shielded).

  • Category 6 augmented (Cat 6A): Uss the 10GBASE-T (10GBASE-T (10 Gbit/s) ethernet standard, with a supporting distance of up to 100 meters.

Coaxial

• Typically used for cable modem/cable television. RG-6 is the most common form of this cable.

Shielded twisted pair

• Balanced wire pair: two wires with equal and opposite signals.

  • Sometimes referred to as Transmit+/Transmit- or Receive+/Receive- because of this

• MUST BE TWISTED: Keeps a single wire constantly moving from the interface, so any interference can be identified

  • Opposite signals are compared at the other end of the wire.

• Has additional shielding to protect against interference.

• Shielding on each pair and/or overall cable

• STP cables are also grounded

• Acronyms for shielding:

  • U = unshielded

  • S = braided shielding

  • F = foil shielding

• Format: [overall shielding]/[wire shielding]TP

  • Example: S/FTP - braided shielding outside the wires, foil shielding around each individual wire.

    

• Direct burial STP: Placing network cabling in the ground as an alternative to overhead cabling.

  • Designed to be waterproof and often filled with gel to repel water.

T568A/T56B standard

• The cabling standard for pin/pair assignments for twisted pair cabling.

• Two variations based on color coding are used to maintain consistency in installations. This includes using T568A for residential wiring and T568B for commercial applications.

  

Unshielded twisted pair

• Cables with no additional shielding - most common type of twisted pair cabling.

Plenum-related

• A plenum is an area inside a commercial building that stores warmer air/returned air for heating and cooling.

  

  • Network cables are typically placed inside here - in the case of fire, network cables may produce smoke that may be returned to the regular office building.

  • If an office has a plenum, using plenum-related cabling is essential to reduce problems in the event of a fire.

• Examples of plenum-rated cables:

  • Fluorinated ethylene polymer (FEP) or low-smoke polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

    • May not be as flexible, but fire resistant.

Optical

Single-mode

Multimode

• Multi-mode: Ideal for short distances, allowing multiple light paths for greater bandwidth.