© Copyright Brian Brown, 1996-1999. All rights reserved.
This material may not be reproduced in printed or electronic format without the express permission of the author.

Coaxial Cable
Coaxial cable has traditionally been the cable of choice for low cost, small user networks. This has been mainly due to its ease of use and low cost. Persons with mininal network understanding can readily build a LAN using coax components, which can often be purchased in kit ready format.

The general features of coaxial cable are,

• medium capacity
• Ethernet systems (10Mbps)
• slighter dearer than UTP
• more difficult to terminate
• not as subject to interference as UTP
• care when bending and installing is needed
• 10Base2 uses RG-58AU (also called Thin-Net or Cheaper Net)
• 10Base5 uses a thicker solid core coaxial cable (also called Thick-Net)

Thin coaxial cable [RG-58AU rated at 50 ohms], as used in Ethernet LAN's, looks like

The connectors used in thin-net Ethernet LAN's are T connectors (used to join cables together and attach to workstations) and terminators (one at each end of the cable). The T-connectors and terminators look like

The features of fiber-optic cable systems are,

• expensive
• used for backbones [linking LAN’s together] or FDDI rings (100Mbps)
• high capacity [100Mbps]
• immune to electromagnetic interference
• low loss
• difficult to join
• connectors are expensive
• long distance

Fiber optic is often used to overcome distance limitations. It can be used to join two hubs together, which normally could not be connected due to distance limitations. In this instance, a UTP to Fiber transceiver [often referred to as a FOT] is necessary. Fiber optic cable looks like

In addition, fiber optic patch panels are used to interconnect fiber cables. These patch panels look like