Application (in terms of cabling infrastructure) – The technology that will take advantage of the cabling system. Applications include telephone systems (analog voice and digital voice), Ethernet, Token Ring, ATM, ISDN, and RS – 232.
Unshielded Twisted Pair – A pair of copper wires twisted together with no electromagnetic shielding around them. Each wire pair is twisted many times per foot (higher grade UTP cable can have more than 20 twists per foot). The twists serve to cancel out the electromagnetic interference that the transmission of electrical signal though the pairs generates.
Shielded Twisted Pair – A type of twisted-pair cable in which the pairs are enclosed in an outer braided shield, although individual pairs may also be shielded. The pairs in STP cable have an individual shield, and the individual shielded cables are wrapped in an overall shield. The advantage of STP cable over UTP cable is that there is less attenuation at higher frequencies and is less susceptible to EMI.
Fiber-Optic Cable – Fiber-optic cable uses a strand of glass or plastic to transmit data signals using light; the data is carries in light pulses. Unlike UTP/STP, the transmission techniques are not electrical in nature. Plastic-core is easier to install than traditional glass core, but plastic cannot carry data as far as glass.
Dark Fiber – When telecommunication companies first run the fiber-optic cable, they don’t run the exact number of strands that they need. They install two to three times as much as they require. The spare strands of fiber are called dark fiber because they are not in use. The Dark Fiber usually lease out these lines to other companies.
Coaxial Cable – Also called coax cable. When it was invented in 1929 it was mainly used by the phone companies; today it’s mainly used for cable TV and by older Ethernet. It is called coaxial cable because it has a