CompTIA Network+ (2009 Objectives) Tutorials
Network Cabling / UTP Cable
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Subtitles of the Movie (CompTIA Network+ (2009 Objectives) / Network Cabling / UTP Cable)
In this video let's talk a little more about UTP cable. Now first of all, UTP cable, or Unshielded Twisted Pair cable, is the most popular network cabling that's in use today and you will notice that inside this sheath or this covering that makes the wire appear to us as a wire, it actually encloses different amounts of pairs. Usually you're going to see four pairs of wires in here, and as technology expands you're going to see more of these. But you'll notice that these wires are twisted and if I just lay two wires side by side then the electromagnetic interference between the two wires start to mess with the data that's moving between the wires. But interestingly enough, one of the oddities of physics, if I twist these wires together like you see here, it greatly reduces that cross talk between the wires. And there are standards on this. They have to be twisted so many times per inch for it to work. There's a whole fascinating technology. If you're a real nerd and enjoy reading that stuff go out and read just about how these wires are made and the engineering standards and so forth. Pretty fascinating. Now, I'm talking about UTP in this video and let me explain something here once again. There are really two types of Twisted Pair cable, twisted pair meaning we've got a pair of wires that have actually been twisted together, and that is UTP, which is what we're talking about here, Unshielded Twisted Pair, and STP which is Shielded Twisted Pair. Now we'll talk about Shielded Twisted Pair in a separate video but I just kind of want you to understand why we're talking about UTP because there is another kind, OK? Now, with UTP, I've already mentioned, it's the most popular in use today and here's why. The advantages. Number one, it's very low cost compared to any other types of cabling. It is very flexible and this is probably one of the biggest reasons. If you've ever worked trying to pull cable or run cables through buildings and you're having to pull the cable through conduit and you're having to work it across multiple floors, being very flexible helps tremendously in turning corners and dealing with other wires that are already inside that conduit. It also has a small diameter which makes working in conduit and changing and rearranging and pulling cable much, much easier to work with. Let me back up here. Not only is it low cost to buy from the get-go, but it's also much lower cost because when your cable pullers can just kind of jerk one of these through a conduit in just a few minutes it's much, much easier than if they have to put this cable grease on it and do all kind of weird tips and tricks and all kinds of things and spend four or five hours trying to get a cable pulled. So the small size, the flexibility, makes it much, much easier to work with and cheaper in the long run. Now the disadvantages is this is not shielded. In other words, there's nothing protecting this wire inherently from any kind of electromagnetic interference. If you just take most UTP cable, Unshielded Twisted Pair cable, and you lay it in a drop ceiling, if you lay that across a fluorescent light you're probably going to pick up so much electromagnetic interference that you can't transmit data through this wire any more, alright? So any kind of electromagnetic interference will cause a problem for Unshielded Twisted Pair cable, so just keep that in mind. Now when we're talking about Unshielded Twisted Pair cable we have different grades or categories of it and you need to know this stuff. Category 3 Unshielded Twisted Pair cable is used to carry data and it will carry it at 10 megabits per second. Category 5 UTP cable will carry the data at 100 megabits per second. Category 5E will carry the data at 1 gigabit per second. That, by the way, in English is a 1,000 megabits. And Category 6 UTP cable will transmit data at 10 gigabits per second. Now that's 10,000 megabits per second in English, alright? You need to know that each one of these - Category 3, 5, 5E, and 6 - all have a usable distance of 100 meters which is about 330 feet. And you will see out there people call the 100 meter distance, they'll call it 300 feet, 328 feet, 330 feet, but it's around 330 feet. You need to memorize these. You need to know the transfer rates and the distances of these four categories of Unshielded Twisted Pair cable. Again, this is the most basic. This is what you'll see most of the time and just learn these four categories and you should be good to go on any kind of question or situation involving Unshielded Twisted Pair cable.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | CompTIA Network+ (2009 Objectives) |
| Author: | Mark Long |
| SKU: | 34216 |
| ISBN: | 1-936334-90-9 |
| Release Date: | 2011-04-29 |
| Duration: | 6 hrs / 91 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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