Notes

A shielded twisted pair is most commonly used among business installations, though the more commonly used type of wire that is installed and utilized in your home are unshielded twisted pairs. A twisted pair itself is simply the normal copper wire that is used in order to connect home computers along with many business computers to the telephone company. As an attempt to decrease crosstalk or electromagnetic induction between pairs of wires, two separate insulated copper wires are twisted around each other. Since there are some desktop locations or telephone sets that ultimately require multiple connections, twisted pairs are sometimes installed, all within a single cable.

This is all new knowledge to me but it seems that a campus area network, or CAN, is a network that consists of multiple interconnected local area networks, or LAN’s, all within a limited geographical area. Also, a CAN is smaller than a wide area network, or WAN, and is also smaller than a metropolitan area network, or MAN. The term CAN is also commonly recognized as standing for corporate area network.

Cat6 cables, also referred to as Category 6 or Cat 6 cables, offer lower crosstalk, an advanced signal-to-noise ratio, along with being suitable for 10-Gigabit Ethernet, whereas Cat5e cables support only up to a single Gigabit Ethernet. As a source for future-proofing your network, Cat6 is commonly a superior choice and worth the lesser premium in price. Cat5e and Cat6 cables are both backwards compatible, which means that the newer Cat6 cables have the ability to be used with the older Cat5e, Cat5 and even Cat3 equipment.

When pertaining to today's high speed networks, Graded Index Multimode fiber or Step Index Single mode fiber cable is commonly used in order to improve the transmission of light over longer distances. Multimode fiber optic cable will ultimately have a core that is larger and is normally used for short runs that are within buildings. Copper cabling works by using electricity in order to transmit a signal from one end to another, but fiber optics work by using light pulses in order to achieve the same result. The fiber optic cable is created out of a transparent glass core that is enclosed by a mirror like casing which is called cladding. Total internal reflection is where the light that passes through the fiber optic cable bounces off of the cladding until it has reached the other end of the fiber channel.  

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