Department
Vocational Pedagogy
ICT-NE-7
Date of delivery:
Topic: Networks cables
Student ID/Name
202332487
Mansour Alqahtani
Networks
What is a Network?
A network consists of two or more computers that are linked in order to share resources (such as printers and CDs),
exchange files, or allow electronic communications. The computers on a network may be linked through cables,
telephone lines, radio waves, satellites, or infrared light beams.
Two very common types of networks include:
Local Area Network (LAN)
Wide Area Network (WAN)
Local Area Network
A Local Area Network (LAN) is a network that is confined to a relatively small area. It is generally limited to a
geographic area such as a writing lab, school, or building.
Computers connected to a network are broadly categorized as servers or workstations. Servers are generally not used
by humans directly, but rather run continuously to provide "services" to the other computers (and their human users)
on the network. Services provided can include printing and faxing, software hosting, file storage and sharing,
messaging, data storage and retrieval, complete access control (security) for the network's resources, and many
others.
Workstations are called such because they typically do have a human user which interacts with the network through
them. Workstations were traditionally considered a desktop, consisting of a computer, keyboard, display, and mouse,
or a laptop, with with integrated keyboard, display, and touchpad. With the advent of the tablet computer, and the
touch screen devices such as iPad and iPhone, our definition of workstation is quickly evolving to include those
devices, because of their ability to interact with the network and utilize network services.
Wide Area Network
Wide Area Networks (WANs) connect networks in larger geographic areas, such as, ALL RYADH the KSA, or the world.
Dedicated transoceanic cabling or satellite uplinks may be used to connect this type of global network.
Using a WAN, schools in Florida can communicate with places like Tokyo in a matter of seconds, without paying
enormous phone bills. Two users a half-world apart with workstations equipped with microphones and a webcams
might teleconference in real time. A WAN is complicated. It uses multiplexers, bridges, and routers to connect local
and metropolitan networks to global communications networks like the Internet. To users, however, a WAN will not
appear to be much different than a LAN.
Networks cables
introduction
Despite advances in wireless technologies, many computer networks in the 21st century continue utilizing cables as a
physical medium for devices to transfer data. Several different types of network cables exist, each designed for specific
purposes.
Coaxial Cables
First invented in the 1880s, "coax" was best known as the kind of cable that connected television sets to home
antennas. Coaxial cable is also a standard for 10 Mbps Ethernet cables . These cables consist of an inner copper wire of
varying thickness surrounded by insulation and other shielding .
Twisted Pair Cables
Twisted pair eventually emerged during the 1990s as the leading cabling standard for Ethernet, starting with 10 Mbps
(10BASE-T, also known as Category 3 or Cat3), later followed by improved versions for 100 Mbps (100BASE-TX, Cat5
and Cat5e) and successively higher speeds up to 10 Gbps (10GBASE-T). Ethernet twisted pair cables contain up to 8
wires wound together in pairs to minimize electromagnetic interference.
Two primary types of twisted pair cable industry standards are defined – Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) and Shielded
Twisted Pair (STP). Modern Ethernet cables use UTP wiring due to its lower cost, while STP cabling can be found in
some other types of networks such as FDDI.
Fiber Optics
Instead of insulated metal wires transmitting electrical signals, fiber optic network cables work using strands of glass
and pulses of light. These network cables are bendable despite being made of glass. They have proven especially
useful in
wide area network (WANs) installations where long distance underground or outdoor cable runs are required and also
in office buildings where a high volume of communication traffic is common.
USB Cables
Most Universal Serial Bus (USB) cables connect a computer with a peripheral device (keyboard or mouse) rather than
to another computer for networking. However, special adapters (sometimes called dongles ) also allow connecting an
Ethernet cable to a USB port indirectly. USB cables feature twisted-pair wiring.
Serial and Parallel Cables
Because many PCs in the 1980s and early 1990s lacked Ethernet capability, and USB had not been developed yet, serial
and parallel interfaces that are obsolete on modern computers were sometimes used for PC-to-PC networking. Socalled null model cables , for example,
Crossover Cables
Null modem cables are one example of the category of crossover cables . A crossover cable joins two network devices
of the same type, such as two PCs or two network switches .