Coaxial Cables
Coaxial cables, commonly known as Coax, include two conductors surrounding a common center. Looking at cross-section of coaxial cable, we see a copper conductor, wrapped in a dielectric material. The dielectric material is wrapped in a round conductor, usually constructed as a mesh and this second conductor is wrapped in a protective layer of Teflon or PVC. It is obvious that a coaxial cable is not the most flexible, or durable thing you can find for network construction. The advantage of these cables is that thy can be used over relatively large distances without a need for a repeater (185 meters when using an RG-58 cable or up to 500 meters when using a thicker cable).

The most common coaxial cable in use in LANs is RG-58 cable, which is 3/8” wide. Ethernet networks based on coaxial cables are called 10Base2 (thin cable) and 10Base 5 (thicker cables). 10 Stands for 10 mega bits per second, the Base for BaseBand, which is the transmission method and 2 is a rounding up of the allowed 185 meters distance to hundreds of meters. The use of networks based on coaxial cables is diminishing, which means it is no recommended to construct a new network with this kind of hardware due to optional hardware availability problems.

Twisted Wire Pair Cables
These cables long used for voice communication (telephone), have become the most common wiring method in LANs. They are constructed of two wrapped wires (0.4-0.875mm in diameter), covered with a thin layer of PVC each, and twisted around each other in a spiral structure. The twisting of the cables around each other is what gives these cables their name. The twist helps eliminate electromagnetic interference by generating counter interference.

Ethernet networks and Compulite’s Ethernet network of 2 pair UTP that is sufficient today will enable an easy upgrade of the network to work in fast Ethernet (100Mbps). These wires use RJ45 connectors.

Fiber Optic Cables
These cables are constructed from a high-purity optical medium, usually glass but sometimes optical-quality plastic, wrapped in a plastic protective layer. These cables transmit signals based on light waves. A widely used fiber optic cable for LANs is the 62.5/125 cable, where the 62.5 is the fiber optic core diameter in microns and the 125 is the protective layer diameter in microns. Fiber-optic cables are used in pairs, one for transmitting and one for receiving. The fiber optic cable can be used to connect devices located up to 1 km apart. Since these cables do not transmit electrical signals, they are not sensitive to outside interference. On the other hand, the nature of the substance they are made of restricts their use to areas and installations where their relative delicateness and turn radius will not be problematic. Another important issue regarding the use of fiber-optic cables is the need for special hubs that can connect fiber-optic segments to UTP segments. These hubs are more costly and have to have 10Base-FL ports for connecting the send and receive fiber optic cables.