Networking - Cabling Technologies

A Local Area Network (LAN) represents a series of computers connected together to share information and resources. Today, the LAN exists in many forms, and the vast majority of them are voice and data cabling networked in one way or another.
Though there have been many developments over the years in the way of wireless technology, the most important networks, nearly all business networks, still rely fully on a wired topology. A wired connection provides connectivity, reliability, security, and interference resistance completely unrivaled by anything wireless topologies have to offer. Wired networks also provide significantly lower "ping" time, or latency, which results in faster communication.
The most common type of cable in use today for data networks is Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cabling. There are many communication standards for UTP cabling, but the most common are Category 5e (Cat5e) and Category 6 (Cat6). Among these two, Cat5e cabling is more common, and is typically used in a star network topology at 100mbps. The Cat5e standard is capable of supporting Gigabit Ethernet (1gbps), but is generally not used in these more sophisticated network settings.
Cat6 cabling is slowly becoming the more common standard, as rising technologies and increased demand for higher end network services have contributed to lower cost. Within a few years, most of the existing Cat5e networks will have been replaced with the more robust Cat6 standard.
Another cabling technology that is slowly gaining more mainstream footing is fiber optical cabling. By far the best, most efficient way to transfer data, fiber optics are truly the way of the future. While modern computer technologies are beginning to maximize the transmission abilities of copper wiring, we have not even reached the point of fully understanding what type of performance fiber optics are able to offer.
Price factor aside, there is literally no downside to fiber optics voice and data cabling for use in a data network. The cables are smaller, resulting in less clutter. The medium is exponentially faster than anything else available. Fiber optic communications are completely immune to electrical interference. The list of advantages goes on, and as driving technological advances decrease the costs, it is clear fiber optic is the way of the future.

 

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