Transmission Media

Transmission Media

Ratings: 10+5=15

Networking Transmission Media:

Networking Transmission Media is the actual path over which an electrical signal goes as it moves starting with one part then onto the next.

There are 2 types of transmission media used in Networking

1. Wired (Cables)
2. Wireless (Air)

There are three types of wired transmission media,

1. Coaxial Cables
2. Twisted Pair Cables
3. Fiber Optic Cables

Coaxial Cables: A Coaxial Cable or Coax is a cable, is used in the transmission of audio, video & communications. Mainly Coaxial Cables are used as network & broadband cable. These cables have high bandwidths & greater transmission capacity. The adjacent figure is of a commonly used Coaxial Cable. These cables have a metal male connector end that is screwed onto a female connector.

The Coaxial Cables are of two types-

1. Thicker (10Base5)
2. Thinner (10Base2)

Thicknet, also known as Thick Ethernet or 10Base5.

Thinnet also known as Thin Ethernet or 10Base2, are antiquated Ethernet networking technologies.

Both technologies use Coax that consists of solid copper core surrounded by an insulator. 10Base2 is known as Cheaper Net, Thin Ethernet, Thinnet & Thinwire which is a variant of Ethernet that uses Thin Coaxial Cable, terminated with BNC connectors. Here, 10Base2 means,

• 10 MBps speed
• Baseband signals & 
• 200 meters length (actual usage is 185 metres).

And, 10Base5 is known as Thick Ethernet or Thicknet that was the first commercially available variant of Ethernet. Here, 10Base5 means

• 10 Mbps speed
• Baseband signals &
• 500 metre length.

Understanding the Thinnet & Thicknet concepts:

The number 10: At the front each identifier, 10 denotes the standard data transfer speed over these media - ten Megabits per second (Mbps).

The word Base: Short for Baseband, this part of the identifier signifies a type of network that uses only one carrier frequency for signalling & requires all network stations to share it's use.

The segment type or segment length: This part of the identifier can be a digit or a letter
Digit: shorthand for how long (in metres) a cable segment may be before attenuation sets in. For example, a 10Base5 segment can be no more than 500 metres long.
Letter: identifies a specific physical type of cable. For example, the T at the end of 10BaseT stands for twisted-pair.

Twisted Pair Cables: Twisted Pair Cable is a very important network media. It can be used for phone communications & cable Ethernet networks. Twisted Pair cabling is a type of during in which two conductors of a single circuit are twisted tohtoget for the purlpurp of cancelling out ElectroMagnetic InerfeInterf (EMI) from external sources. There are two kinds of twisted Pair cable, UTP & STP.

UTP: UTP means Unshielded Twisted Pair, which is the copper media & inherited from telephony, which can be used for increasingly higher data rates, & is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for horizontal wiring, the connection between, & including the outlet & the termination in the communication closet.

• The advantage of UTP is that they are very flexible, low cost media & can be used for either voice or data communications.
• And, the main disadvantage with UTP is the bandwidth. We cannot achieve high bandwidth with UTP cables.

STP: STP cable is Shielded Twisted Pair copper conductive netting or casing, performed with individually or with external conductive shield around all pairs. It is heavier & more difficult to manufacture, but it can extraordinarily enhance the signalling rate in a vivek transmission plot. Twisting give cancellation of magnetically induced fields & currents on a pair of conductors.

• The main advantage of STP is that it ensures greater protection from all types of external interference than UTP cable.
• And the disadvantage, it is more expensive than UTP cable.

Fiber Optic Cables: Fibre Optic Cable is a fast information transmission medium. Fiber Optic Cables carry communication signals using pulses of light generated by small lasers or light-emmiting diodes (LEDs).

It contains minor glass or plastic fibres, which carry light beams & the coating helps preserve the fibres from heat, cold, electromagnetic delay from distinct types of wiring, as readily as some protection from ultraviolet raha from the sun. Fibre Optic manages for an essentially master data transmission than standard copper wires. And the Fibre Optic Cables bandwidth is much higher than older cables.

Advantages of Fibre Optic Cables:

• Fibre cables offer several advantages over traditional long-distance copper cabling.
• Fibre optics have a higher capacity. The amount of network bandwidth a fibre cable can carry easily exceeds that of a copper cable with similar thickness. Fiber cables rated at 10 Gbps, 40 Gbps & even 100 Gbps are standard. Since light can travel much longer distances down a fibre cable without losing it's strength, it lessens the need for signal boosters.
• Fiber is less susceptible to interference. A traditional network cable requires special shielding (like in STP) to protect it from electromagnetic interference. While this shielding helps, it is not sufficient to prevent interference when many cables are strung together in close proximity to each other. The physical priorities of glass & fibre cables avoid most of these issues.

There are two types of Fibre Optic Cables they are:

1. Single mode Fiber Optic Cable.
   
2. Multi-mode Fiber Optic Cable.

Comparing Transmission Media:

Name of Student: Harsh Tiwari
Faculty Name: Naresh  Sir
Roll No: JK-ENR-SW-1621
Date: 01-04-2018
Session Name: Transmission Media

Summary of learning: Learning about different types of networking media