COMPUTER NETWORKS UNIT-I

1.What are the Components and uses of Computer Networks

o Computer Network is a group of computers connected with each other through wires,
optical fibres or optical links so that various devices can interact with each other through
a network.
o The aim of the computer network is the sharing of resources among various devices.
o In the case of computer network technology, there are several types of networks that vary
from simple to complex level.

Components Of Computer Network:

Major components of a computer network are:

NIC(National interface card)

NIC is a device that helps the computer to communicate with another device. The network
interface card contains the hardware addresses, the data-link layer protocol use this address to
identify the system on the network so that it transfers the data to the correct destination.

There are two types of NIC: wireless NIC and wired NIC.

o Wireless NIC: All the modern laptops use the wireless NIC. In Wireless NIC, a
connection is made using the antenna that employs the radio wave technology.
o Wired NIC: Cables use the wired NIC to transfer the data over the medium.

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Hub

Hub is a central device that splits the network connection into multiple devices. When computer
requests for information from a computer, it sends the request to the Hub. Hub distributes this
request to all the interconnected computers.

Switches

Switch is a networking device that groups all the devices over the network to transfer the data to
another device. A switch is better than Hub as it does not broadcast the message over the
network, i.e., it sends the message to the device for which it belongs to. Therefore, we can say
that switch sends the message directly from source to the destination.

Cables and connectors

Cable is a transmission media that transmits the communication signals. There are three types
of cables:

o Twisted pair cable: It is a high-speed cable that transmits the data over 1Gbps or more.
o Coaxial cable: Coaxial cable resembles like a TV installation cable. Coaxial cable is
more expensive than twisted pair cable, but it provides the high data transmission speed.
o Fibre optic cable: Fibre optic cable is a high-speed cable that transmits the data using
light beams. It provides high data transmission speed as compared to other cables. It is
more expensive as compared to other cables, so it is installed at the government level.

Router

Router is a device that connects the LAN to the internet. The router is mainly used to connect the
distinct networks or connect the internet to multiple computers.

Modem

Modem connects the computer to the internet over the existing telephone line. A modem is not
integrated with the computer motherboard. A modem is a separate part on the PC slot found on
the motherboard.

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Uses Of Computer Network
o Resource sharing: Resource sharing is the sharing of resources such as programs,
printers, and data among the users on the network without the requirement of the physical
location of the resource and user.
o Server-Client model: Computer networking is used in the server-client model. A server
is a central computer used to store the information and maintained by the system
administrator. Clients are the machines used to access the information stored in the server
remotely.
o Communication medium: Computer network behaves as a communication medium
among the users. For example, a company contains more than one computer has an email
system which the employees use for daily communication.
o E-commerce: Computer network is also important in businesses. We can do the business
over the internet. For example, amazon.com is doing their business over the internet, i.e.,
they are doing their business over the internet.

2.Explain TCP/IP model in detail:-

TCP/IP model
o The TCP/IP model was developed prior to the OSI model.
o The TCP/IP model is not exactly similar to the OSI model.
o The TCP/IP model consists of five layers: the application layer, transport layer, network
layer, data link layer and physical layer.
o The first four layers provide physical standards, network interface, internetworking, and
transport functions that correspond to the first four layers of the OSI model and these four
layers are represented in TCP/IP model by a single layer called the application layer.
o TCP/IP is a hierarchical protocol made up of interactive modules, and each of them
provides specific functionality.

Here, hierarchical means that each upper-layer protocol is supported by two or more lower-level
protocols.

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Functions of TCP/IP layers:

Network Access Layer

o A network layer is the lowest layer of the TCP/IP model.
o A network layer is the combination of the Physical layer and Data Link layer defined in
the OSI reference model.
o It defines how the data should be sent physically through the network.
o This layer is mainly responsible for the transmission of the data between two devices on
the same network.
o The functions carried out by this layer are encapsulating the IP datagram into frames
transmitted by the network and mapping of IP addresses into physical addresses.
o The protocols used by this layer are ethernet, token ring, FDDI, X.25, frame relay.

Internet Layer
o An internet layer is the second layer of the TCP/IP model.
o An internet layer is also known as the network layer.
o The main responsibility of the internet layer is to send the packets from any network, and
they arrive at the destination irrespective of the route they take.

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Following are the protocols used in this layer are:

IP Protocol: IP protocol is used in this layer, and it is the most significant part of the entire
TCP/IP suite.

Following are the responsibilities of this protocol:

o IP Addressing: This protocol implements logical host addresses known as IP addresses.

The IP addresses are used by the internet and higher layers to identify the device and to
provide internetwork routing.
o Host-to-host communication: It determines the path through which the data is to be
transmitted.
o Data Encapsulation and Formatting: An IP protocol accepts the data from the transport
layer protocol. An IP protocol ensures that the data is sent and received securely, it
encapsulates the data into message known as IP datagram.
o Fragmentation and Reassembly: The limit imposed on the size of the IP datagram by
data link layer protocol is known as Maximum Transmission unit (MTU). If the size of IP
datagram is greater than the MTU unit, then the IP protocol splits the datagram into
smaller units so that they can travel over the local network. Fragmentation can be done by
the sender or intermediate router. At the receiver side, all the fragments are reassembled
to form an original message.
o Routing: When IP datagram is sent over the same local network such as LAN, MAN,
WAN, it is known as direct delivery. When source and destination are on the distant
network, then the IP datagram is sent indirectly. This can be accomplished by routing the
IP datagram through various devices such as routers.

ARP Protocol

o ARP stands for Address Resolution Protocol.

o ARP is a network layer protocol which is used to find the physical address from the IP
address.
o The two terms are mainly associated with the ARP Protocol:
o ARP request: When a sender wants to know the physical address of the device, it
broadcasts the ARP request to the network.

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 o ARP reply: Every device attached to the network will accept the ARP request
and process the request, but only recipient recognize the IP address and sends
back its physical address in the form of ARP reply. The recipient adds the
physical address both to its cache memory and to the datagram header

ICMP Protocol

o ICMP stands for Internet Control Message Protocol.

o It is a mechanism used by the hosts or routers to send notifications regarding datagram
problems back to the sender.
o A datagram travels from router-to-router until it reaches its destination. If a router is
unable to route the data because of some unusual conditions such as disabled links, a
device is on fire or network congestion, then the ICMP protocol is used to inform the
sender that the datagram is undeliverable.
o An ICMP protocol mainly uses two terms:
o ICMP Test: ICMP Test is used to test whether the destination is reachable or not.
o ICMP Reply: ICMP Reply is used to check whether the destination device is
responding or not.
o The core responsibility of the ICMP protocol is to report the problems, not correct them.
The responsibility of the correction lies with the sender.
o ICMP can send the messages only to the source, but not to the intermediate routers
because the IP datagram carries the addresses of the source and destination but not of the
router that it is passed to.

Transport Layer

The transport layer is responsible for the reliability, flow control, and correction of data which is
being sent over the network.

The two protocols used in the transport layer are User Datagram protocol and Transmission
control protocol.

o User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

o It provides connectionless service and end-to-end delivery of transmission.
o It is an unreliable protocol as it discovers the errors but not specify the error.

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 o User Datagram Protocol discovers the error, and ICMP protocol reports the error
to the sender that user datagram has been damaged.
o UDP consists of the following fields:
Source port address: The source port address is the address of the application
program that has created the message.
Destination port address: The destination port address is the address of the
application program that receives the message.
Total length: It defines the total number of bytes of the user datagram in bytes.
Checksum: The checksum is a 16-bit field used in error detection.
o UDP does not specify which packet is lost. UDP contains only checksum; it does
not contain any ID of a data segment.

o Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)

o It provides a full transport layer services to applications.
o It creates a virtual circuit between the sender and receiver, and it is active for the
duration of the transmission.
o TCP is a reliable protocol as it detects the error and retransmits the damaged
frames. Therefore, it ensures all the segments must be received and acknowledged
before the transmission is considered to be completed and a virtual circuit is
discarded.

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 o At the sending end, TCP divides the whole message into smaller units known as
segment, and each segment contains a sequence number which is required for
reordering the frames to form an original message.
o At the receiving end, TCP collects all the segments and reorders them based on
sequence numbers.

Application Layer
o An application layer is the topmost layer in the TCP/IP model.
o It is responsible for handling high-level protocols, issues of representation.
o This layer allows the user to interact with the application.
o When one application layer protocol wants to communicate with another application
layer, it forwards its data to the transport layer.
o There is an ambiguity occurs in the application layer. Every application cannot be placed
inside the application layer except those who interact with the communication system.
For example: text editor cannot be considered in application layer while web browser
using HTTP protocol to interact with the network where HTTP protocol is an
application layer protocol.

Following are the main protocols used in the application layer:

o HTTP: HTTP stands for Hypertext transfer protocol. This protocol allows us to access
the data over the world wide web. It transfers the data in the form of plain text, audio,
video. It is known as a Hypertext transfer protocol as it has the efficiency to use in a
hypertext environment where there are rapid jumps from one document to another.
o SNMP: SNMP stands for Simple Network Management Protocol. It is a framework used
for managing the devices on the internet by using the TCP/IP protocol suite.
o SMTP: SMTP stands for Simple mail transfer protocol. The TCP/IP protocol that
supports the e-mail is known as a Simple mail transfer protocol. This protocol is used to
send the data to another e-mail address.
o DNS: DNS stands for Domain Name System. An IP address is used to identify the
connection of a host to the internet uniquely. But, people prefer to use the names instead
of addresses. Therefore, the system that maps the name to the address is known as
Domain Name System.

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 o TELNET: It is an abbreviation for Terminal Network. It establishes the connection
between the local computer and remote computer in such a way that the local terminal
appears to be a terminal at the remote system.
o FTP: FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP is a standard internet protocol used for
transmitting the files from one computer to another computer.

3. Explain about the ARPANET

The story begins in the late 1950s. At the height of the Cold War, the DoD wanted a command-
and-control network that could survive a nuclear war. At that time, all military communications
used the public telephone network, which was considered vulnerable.

The reason for this belief can be gleaned from Fig. 1-25(a). Here the 45 black dots represent
telephone switching offices, each of which was connected to thousands of telephones. These
switching offices were, in turn, connected to higher-level switching offices (toll offices), to form
a national hierarchy with only a small amount of redundancy. The vulnerability of the system
was that the destruction of a few key toll offices could fragment the system into many isolated
islands.

Around 1960, the DoD awarded a contract to the RAND Corporation to find a solution. One of
its employees, Paul Baran, came up with the highly distributed and fault-tolerant design . Since
the paths between any two switching offices were now much longer than analog signals could
travel without distortion, Baran proposed using digital packet-switching technology throughout
the system. Baran wrote several reports for the DoD describing his ideas in detail. Officials at the
Pentagon liked the concept and asked AT&T, then the U.S. national telephone monopoly, to
build a prototype. AT&T dismissed Baran's ideas out of hand. The biggest and richest
corporation in the world was not about to allow some young whippersnapper tell it how to build
a telephone system. They said Baran's network could not be built and the idea was killed.

Several years went by and still the DoD did not have a better command-and-control system. To
understand what happened next, we have to go back to October 1957, when the Soviet Union
beat the U.S. into space with the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. When President
Eisenhower tried to find out who was asleep at the switch, he was appalled to find the Army,

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Navy, and Air Force squabbling over the Pentagon's research budget. His immediate response
was to create a single defense research organization, ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects
Agency. ARPA had no scientists or laboratories; in fact, it had nothing more than an office and a
small (by Pentagon standards) budget. It did its work by issuing grants and contracts to
universities and companies whose ideas looked promising to it.

NSFNET By the late 1970s, NSF (the U.S. National Science Foundation) saw the enormous
impact the ARPANET was having on university research, allowing scientists across the country
to share data and collaborate on research projects. However, to get on the ARPANET, a
university had to have a research contract with the DoD, which many did not have. NSF's
response was to design a successor to the ARPANET that would be open to all university
research groups. To have something concrete to start with, NSF decided to build a backbone
network 48 to connect its six supercomputer centers, in San Diego, Boulder, Champaign,
Pittsburgh, Ithaca, and Princeton. Each supercomputer was given a little brother, consisting of an
LSI-11 microcomputer called a fuzzball. The fuzzballs were connected with 56-kbps leased
lines and formed the subnet, the same hardware technology as the ARPANET used. The software
technology was different however: the fuzzballs spoke TCP/IP right from the start, making it the
first TCP/IP WAN. NSF also funded some (eventually about 20) regional networks that
connected to the backbone to allow users at thousands of universities, research labs, libraries,
and museums to access any of the supercomputers and to communicate with one another. The
complete network, including the backbone and the regional networks, was called NSFNET. It
connected to the ARPANET through a link between an IMP and a fuzzball in the
CarnegieMellon machine room.

Internet Usage

The number of networks, machines, and users connected to the ARPANET grew rapidly after
TCP/IP became the only official protocol on January 1, 1983. When NSFNET and the
ARPANET were interconnected, the growth became exponential. Many regional networks joined
up, and connections were made to networks in Canada, Europe, and the Pacific.

TCP/IP protocol stack, has an IP address, and can send IP packets to all the other machines on
the Internet. The mere ability to send and receive electronic mail is not enough, since e-mail is
gatewayed to many networks outside the Internet. However, the issue is clouded somewhat by

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the fact that millions of personal computers can call up an Internet service provider using a
modem, be assigned a temporary IP address, and send IP packets to other Internet hosts. It makes
sense to regard such machines as being on the Internet for as long as they are connected to the
service provider's router.

four main applications:

1. E-mail. The ability to compose, send, and receive electronic mail has been around since the
early days of the ARPANET and is enormously popular. Many people get dozens of messages a
day and consider it their primary way of interacting with the outside world, far outdistancing the
telephone and snail mail. E-mail programs are available on virtually every kind of computer
these days.

2. News. Newsgroups are specialized forums in which users with a common interest can
exchange messages. Thousands of newsgroups exist, devoted to technical and nontechnical
topics, including computers, science, recreation, and politics. Each newsgroup has its own
etiquette, style, and customs, and woe betide anyone violating them.

3. Remote login. Using the telnet, rlogin, or ssh programs, users anywhere on the Internet can
log on to any other machine on which they have an account.

4. File transfer. Using the FTP program, users can copy files from one machine on the Internet
to another. Vast numbers of articles, databases, and other information are available this way.

Connection-Oriented Networks: X.25, Frame Relay, and ATM

X.25 and Frame Relay

X.25 and Frame Relay Our first example of a connection-oriented network is X.25, which was
the first public data network. It was deployed in the 1970s at a time when telephone service was
a monopoly everywhere and the telephone company in each country expected there to be one
data network per country—theirs. To use X.25, a computer first established a connection to the
remote computer, that is, placed a telephone call. This connection was given a connection
number to be used in data transfer packets (because multiple connections could be open at the
same time). Data packets were very simple, consisting of a 3-byte header and up to 128 bytes of
data. The header consisted of a 12-bit connection number, a packet sequence number, an

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acknowledgement number, and a few miscellaneous bits. X.25 networks operated for about a
decade with mixed success. In the 1980s, the X.25 networks were largely replaced by a new kind
of network called frame relay. The essence of frame relay is that it is a connection-oriented
network with no error control and no flow control. Because it was connection-oriented, packets
were delivered in order (if they were delivered at all). The properties of in-order delivery, no
error control, and no flow control make frame relay akin to a wide area LAN. Its most important
application is interconnecting LANs at multiple company offices. Frame relay enjoyed a modest
success and is still in use in places today.

4.Explain about ATM in detail

Asynchronous Transfer Mode Yet another, and far more important, connection-oriented
network is ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode). The reason for the somewhat strange name is
that in the telephone system, most transmission is synchronous (closely tied to a clock), and
ATM is not. ATM was designed in the early 1990s and launched amid truly incredible hype
(Ginsburg, 1996; Goralski, 1995; Ibe, 1997; Kim et al., 1994; and Stallings, 2000). ATM was
going to solve all the world's networking and telecommunications problems by merging voice,
data, cable television, telex, telegraph, carrier pigeon, tin cans connected by strings, tom-toms,
smoke signals, and everything else into a single integrated system that could do everything for
everyone. It did not happen. In large part, the problems were similar to those we described earlier
concerning OSI, that is, bad timing, technology, implementation, and politics. Having just beaten
back the telephone companies in round 1, many in the Internet community saw ATM as Internet
versus the Telcos: the Sequel. But it really was not, and this time around even diehard datagram
fanatics were aware that the Internet's quality of service left a lot to be desired. To make a long
story short, ATM was much more successful than OSI, and it is now widely used deep within the
telephone system, often for moving IP packets. Because it is now mostly used by carriers for
internal transport, users are often unaware of its existence, but it is definitely alive and well.

ATM and ATM Networks

ATM stands for Asynchronous Transfer Mode. It is a switching technique that uses time
division multiplexing (TDM) for data communications.

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ATM networks are connection oriented networks for cell relay that supports voice, video and
data communications. It encodes data into small fixed - size cells so that they are suitable for
TDM and transmits them over a physical medium.

The size of an ATM cell is 53 bytes: 5 byte header and 48 byte payload. There are two different
cell formats - user-network interface (UNI) and network-network interface (NNI). The below
image represents the Functional Reference Model of the Asynchronous Transfer Mode.

Benefits of ATM Networks are

 It provides the dynamic bandwidth that is particularly suited for bursty traffic.
 Since all data are encoded into identical cells, data transmission is simple, uniform
and predictable.
 Uniform packet size ensures that mixed traffic is handled efficiently.
 Small sized header reduces packet overload, thus ensuring effective bandwidth
usage.
 ATM networks are scalable both in size and speed.
ATM reference model comprises of three layers
 Physical Layer − This layer corresponds to physical layer of OSI model. At this
layer, the cells are converted into bit streams and transmitted over the physical
medium. This layer has two sub layers: PMD sub layer (Physical Medium
Dependent) and TC (Transmission Convergence) sub layer.
 ATM Layer −This layer is comparable to data link layer of OSI model. It accepts
the 48 byte segments from the upper layer, adds a 5 byte header to each segment

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 and converts into 53 byte cells. This layer is responsible for routing of each cell,
traffic management, multiplexing and switching.
 ATM Adaptation Layer (AAL) −This layer corresponds to network layer of OSI
model. It provides facilities to the existing packet switched networks to connect to
ATM network and use its services. It accepts the data and converts them into fixed
sized segments. The transmissions can be of fixed or variable data rate. This layer
has two sub layers − Convergence sub layer and Segmentation and Reassembly
sub layer.
 ATM endpoints − It contains ATM network interface adaptor. Examples of
endpoints are workstations, routers, CODECs, LAN switches, etc.
 ATM switch −It transmits cells through the ATM networks. It accepts the
incoming cells from ATM endpoints (UNI) or another switch (NNI), updates cell
header and retransmits cell towards destination.

5.Explain about Ethernet and wireless LAN in Detail

Ethernet

Both the Internet and ATM were designed for wide area networking. However, many
companies, universities, and other organizations have large numbers of computers that must be
connected. This need gave rise to the local area network. we will say a little bit about the most
popular LAN, Ethernet. The story starts out in pristine Hawaii in the early 1970s. In this case,
''pristine'' can be interpreted as ''not having a working telephone system.'' While not being
interrupted by the phone all day long makes life more pleasant for vacationers, it did not make
life more pleasant for researcher Norman Abramson and his colleagues at the University of
Hawaii who were trying to connect users on remote islands to the main computer in Honolulu.
Stringing their own cables under the Pacific Ocean was not in the cards, so they looked for a
different solution. The one they found was short-range radios. Each user terminal was equipped
with a small radio having two frequencies: upstream (to the central computer) and downstream
(from the central computer). When the user wanted to contact the computer, it just transmitted a
packet containing the data in the upstream channel. If no one else was transmitting at that instant,
the packet probably got through and was acknowledged on the downstream channel. If there was
contention for the upstream channel, the terminal noticed the lack of acknowledgement and tried
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again. Since there was only one sender on the downstream channel (the central computer), there
were never collisions there. This system, called ALOHANET, worked fairly well under
conditions of low traffic but bogged down badly when the upstream traffic was heavy. About the
same time, a student named Bob Metcalfe got his bachelor's degree at M.I.T. and then moved up
the river to get his Ph.D. at Harvard. During his studies, he was exposed to Abramson's work. He
became so interested in it that after graduating from Harvard, he decided to spend the summer in
Hawaii working with Abramson before starting work at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research
Center). When he got to PARC, he saw that the researchers there had designed and built what
would later be called personal computers. But the machines were isolated. Using his knowledge
of Abramson's work, he, together with his colleague David Boggs, designed and implemented
the first local area network (Metcalfe and Boggs, 1976). They called the system Ethernet after
the luminiferous ether, through which electromagnetic radiation was once thought to propagate.
(When the 19th century British physicist James Clerk Maxwell discovered that electromagnetic
radiation could be described by a wave equation, scientists assumed that space must be filled 56
with some ethereal medium in which the radiation was propagating. Only after the famous
Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887 did physicists discover that electromagnetic radiation
could propagate in a vacuum.) The transmission medium here was not a vacuum, but a thick
coaxial cable (the ether) up to 2.5 km long (with repeaters every 500 meters). Up to 256
machines could be attached to the system via transceivers screwed onto the cable. A cable with
multiple machines attached to it in parallel is called a multidrop cable. The system ran at 2.94
Mbps. A sketch of its architecture is given in Fig. 1-34. Ethernet had a major improvement over
ALOHANET: before transmitting, a computer first listened to the cable to see if someone else
was already transmitting. If so, the computer held back until the current transmission finished.
Doing so avoided interfering with existing transmissions, giving a much higher efficiency.
ALOHANET did not work like this because it was impossible for a terminal on one island to
sense the transmission of a terminal on a distant island. With a single cable, this problem does
not exist.

The Xerox Ethernet was so successful that DEC, Intel, and Xerox drew up a standard in 1978 for
a 10-Mbps Ethernet, called the DIX standard. With two minor changes, the DIX standard
became the IEEE 802.3 standard in 1983.

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Wireless LANs:

802.11 Almost as soon as notebook computers appeared, many people had a dream of walking
into an office and magically having their notebook computer be connected to the Internet.
Consequently, various groups began working on ways to accomplish this goal. The most
practical approach is to equip both the office and the notebook computers with short-range radio
transmitters and receivers to allow them to communicate. This work rapidly led to wireless
LANs being marketed by a variety of companies. The trouble was that no two of them were
compatible. This proliferation of standards meant that a computer equipped with a brand X radio
would not work in a room equipped with a brand Y base station. Finally, the industry decided
that a wireless LAN standard might be a good idea, so the IEEE committee that standardized the
wired LANs was given the task of drawing up a wireless LAN standard. The standard it came up
with was named 802.11. A common slang name for it is WiFi. It is an important standard and
deserves respect, so we will call it by its proper name, 802.11. The proposed standard had to
work in two modes: 1. In the presence of a base station. 2. In the absence of a base station. In the
former case, all communication was to go through the base station, called an access point in
802.11 terminology. In the latter case, the computers would just send to one another directly.
This mode is now sometimes called ad hoc networking. A typical example is two or more people
sitting down together in a room not equipped with a wireless LAN and having their computers
just communicate directly.

The first decision was the easiest: what to call it. All the other LAN standards had numbers like
802.1, 802.2, 802.3, up to 802.10, so the wireless LAN standard was dubbed 802.11. The rest
was harder.

The second problem that had to be solved is that a radio signal can be reflected off solid objects,
so it may be received multiple times (along multiple paths). This interference results in what is
called multipath fading.

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The third problem is that a great deal of software is not aware of mobility. For example, many
word processors have a list of printers that users can choose from to print a file. When the
computer on which the word processor runs is taken into a new environment, the built-in list of
printers becomes invalid. The fourth problem is that if a notebook computer is moved away from
the ceiling-mounted base station it is using and into the range of a different base station, some
way of handing it off is needed. Although this problem occurs with cellular telephones, it does
not occur with Ethernet and needed to be solved.

6.Explain about Guided media in detail

Guided Media

It is defined as the physical medium through which the signals are transmitted. It is also known
as Bounded media.

Types Of Guided media:

Twisted pair:

Twisted pair is a physical media made up of a pair of cables twisted with each other. A twisted
pair cable is cheap as compared to other transmission media. Installation of the twisted pair cable
is easy, and it is a lightweight cable. The frequency range for twisted pair cable is from 0 to
3.5KHz.

A twisted pair consists of two insulated copper wires arranged in a regular spiral pattern.

The degree of reduction in noise interference is determined by the number of turns per foot.
Increasing the number of turns per foot decreases noise interference.

Types of Twisted pair:

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Unshielded Twisted Pair:

An unshielded twisted pair is widely used in telecommunication. Following are the categories of
the unshielded twisted pair cable:

o Category 1: Category 1 is used for telephone lines that have low-speed data.
o Category 2: It can support upto 4Mbps.
o Category 3: It can support upto 16Mbps.
o Category 4: It can support upto 20Mbps. Therefore, it can be used for long-distance
communication.
o Category 5: It can support upto 200Mbps.

Advantages Of Unshielded Twisted Pair:

o It is cheap.
o Installation of the unshielded twisted pair is easy.
o It can be used for high-speed LAN.

Disadvantage:

o This cable can only be used for shorter distances because of attenuation.

Shielded Twisted Pair

A shielded twisted pair is a cable that contains the mesh surrounding the wire that allows the
higher transmission rate.

Characteristics Of Shielded Twisted Pair:

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 o The cost of the shielded twisted pair cable is not very high and not very low.
o An installation of STP is easy.
o It has higher capacity as compared to unshielded twisted pair cable.
o It has a higher attenuation.
o It is shielded that provides the higher data transmission rate.

Disadvantages

o It is more expensive as compared to UTP and coaxial cable.

o It has a higher attenuation rate.

Coaxial Cable
o Coaxial cable is very commonly used transmission media, for example, TV wire is
usually a coaxial cable.
o The name of the cable is coaxial as it contains two conductors parallel to each other.
o It has a higher frequency as compared to Twisted pair cable.
o The inner conductor of the coaxial cable is made up of copper, and the outer conductor is
made up of copper mesh. The middle core is made up of non-conductive cover that
separates the inner conductor from the outer conductor.
o The middle core is responsible for the data transferring whereas the copper mesh prevents
from the EMI(Electromagnetic interference).

Coaxial cable is of two types:

1. Baseband transmission: It is defined as the process of transmitting a single signal at

high speed.

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 2. Broadband transmission: It is defined as the process of transmitting multiple signals
simultaneously.

Advantages Of Coaxial cable:

o The data can be transmitted at high speed.

o It has better shielding as compared to twisted pair cable.
o It provides higher bandwidth.

Disadvantages Of Coaxial cable:

o It is more expensive as compared to twisted pair cable.

o If any fault occurs in the cable causes the failure in the entire network.

Fibre Optic
o Fibre optic cable is a cable that uses electrical signals for communication.
o Fibre optic is a cable that holds the optical fibres coated in plastic that are used to send
the data by pulses of light.
o The plastic coating protects the optical fibres from heat, cold, electromagnetic
interference from other types of wiring.
o Fibre optics provide faster data transmission than copper wires.

Diagrammatic representation of fibre optic cable:

Basic elements of Fibre optic cable:

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 o Core: The optical fibre consists of a narrow strand of glass or plastic known as a core. A
core is a light transmission area of the fibre. The more the area of the core, the more light
will be transmitted into the fibre.
o Cladding: The concentric layer of glass is known as cladding. The main functionality of
the cladding is to provide the lower refractive index at the core interface as to cause the
reflection within the core so that the light waves are transmitted through the fibre.
o Jacket: The protective coating consisting of plastic is known as a jacket. The main
purpose of a jacket is to preserve the fibre strength, absorb shock and extra fibre
protection.

Following are the advantages of fibre optic cable over copper:

o Greater Bandwidth: The fibre optic cable provides more bandwidth as compared

copper. Therefore, the fibre optic carries more data as compared to copper cable.
o Faster speed: Fibre optic cable carries the data in the form of light. This allows the fibre
optic cable to carry the signals at a higher speed.
o Longer distances: The fibre optic cable carries the data at a longer distance as compared
to copper cable.
o Better reliability: The fibre optic cable is more reliable than the copper cable as it is
immune to any temperature changes while it can cause obstruct in the connectivity of
copper cable.
o Thinner and Sturdier: Fibre optic cable is thinner and lighter in weight so it can
withstand more pull pressure than copper cable.

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