Sunday 25 September 2011

A Beginner's Guide To Ethernet Cables

By Mark Walters


What would we do without the internet? We use the information superhighway to perform our jobs, look for new ones, and keep in touch with friends and family. There has to exist a way to transfer all of those bits and bytes across cyberspace, and the physical method for doing so is via Ethernet cables. These plug into a jack on the computer and connect to a modem, enabling the user to hook up to the world wide web and begin surfing.

Much of the construction of an Ethernet cable is a twisted-pair design, and these cables make up the physical layer of an Ethernet computer network. Some of these cables take the form of coaxial cable or as fiber optics. One of the most purchased cable on the market today is the 100BASE-TX version, and it carries data at high speeds reaching 100 megabits per second. Its faster cousin, the 1000BASE-T cable, ups the ante by transferring data at 1 gigabit per second. Possibly the most effective feature of these cables is their ability to support older and slower components, an attribute that makes mixing and matching quite simple when necessary.

Essentially, Ethernet cables are responsible for connecting computers to servers and therefore other computers. In larger setups, such as in an office building or anywhere that might feature a server, there will be a large number of cables connecting the server to jacks that in turn are connected to computers in the various rooms of the building. In these rooms, jacks on the wall house Ethernet cables that then plug into the computers inside, linking them to the local server.

In the home, Ethernet cables are also quite common. Households that maintain high speed internet hookups such as DSL and cable will most likely employ a modem that establishes a connection to a server. The modem transfers data to the laptop or desktop via Ethernet cables. These devices are available in a number of colors so that they fit the room better as well as be readily identified amongst other cables. It is often recommended that they be less than 10 feet in length because data tends to breakup and transfer more slowly over distances greater than that.

Whether by rolled cables or by twisted pair, the idea of Ethernet cables is to connect computers to the rest of the world. From the computer to the modem to the server to the rest of the world, data travels all over the world from one user to another. The engine that facilitates this transmission is the Ethernet cable, the most popular form of connection in the home and in the office.




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