Cable Options for Wired Networking
When it comes to wired networking there are many different cabling options that are
available in this day and age. Some of the types that were used previously are now
obsolete. In order to run an effective network it is important to understand and know the
different types of cabling that are available for the network and speeds that you are
wishing to install. There are a few different types of cabling that are used and they include
shielded twisted pair, unshielded twisted pair, coaxial cable, and fiber optic cabling.
Shielded Twisted Pair
The first type of cabling discussed in this paper is shielded twisted pair. Shielded twisted
pair cables have an extra layer of material that wraps each pair of wire separately. It can be
connected to the ground pins to prevent magnetic interference (Shielded Twisted Pair
Cables, 2013). Shielded twisted pair cables are used in long transmission lines when
crosstalk between cables happens quite often. It is used for video transmission in order to
prevent color skewing caused from many different signals that are being sent on adjoining
cables at the same time.
Shielded twisted pair includes wire braiding that wraps around each pair of wires. This
helps to improve the transmission speed of the cable. It also helps to resist interference.
There are shielded twisted pair for Cat 5e, Cat 6, and Cat 6a. The shielded twisted pair is
sometimes known as foiled twisted pair (FTP) and rather than wrapping each pair of wires
it goes around all four wire pairs(Tomsho, 2011).
Unshielded Twisted Pair
The next cabling type would be the unshielded twisted pair which have no conductive
layers that would allow for interference blocking. The performance is usually so good that
the more expensive type of twisted pair cable is not necessary. Unshielded twisted pair is
currently the most common kind of computer network and telephone cable available and
are the most affordable for decent performance (Unshielded Twisted Pair Cables, 2013).
Unless an environment is electrically noisy unshielded twisted pair is most likely used.
When UTP is used in an LAN it will generally have four pairs of insulated wires while
other UTP types ma have fewer pairs. In most phone lines it is unshielded twisted pair that
is used because voice usage is less demanding than networking bandwidth and signal
quality. Unshielded twisted pair has different categories that were made by
Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA).
