NETWORK CABLE TYPES

Network cabling tutorial: cable type, connector, installation guide, tips

Cable is the medium through which information usually moves from one network device to another. There are several types of cable which are commonly used with LANs. In some cases, a network will utilize only one type of cable, other networks will use a variety of cable types. The type of cable chosen for a network is related to the network's topology, protocol, and size. Understanding the characteristics of different types of cable and how they are related to other aspects of a network is important for the development of a successful network.

Cable Standard

10BASE-T Cable Standard

10Base-T is one of the Ethernet standards for cabling in a network environment. 10BaseT uses a twisted pair cable with a maximum length of 100 meters. Standard 10BaseT operates at 10 Mbps. It is commonly used in a star topology.

10BASE-FL Cable Standard

10BaseFL is a fiber optic cable standard designed to run at 10 Mbps. It is similar to 10Base-T, though the media type is fiber. For use up to 2000 meters.

100BASE-TX Cable Standard

100 Mbps Fast Ethernet over category 5 twisted pair cable. Maximum cable length of 100 meters.

100BASE-FX Cable Standard

100 Mbps Fast Ethernet standard over fiber cable. Can transmit data up to 2000 meters.

1000BASE-T Cable Standard

Gigabit ethernet over twisted pair copper wires. Transmit up to 1000 Mbps. 100 meter maximum cable length. Cat5 or better required (Cat6 cabling recommended).

1000BASE-CX Cable Standard

Gigabit ethernet over a special copper twinax cable. Up to 25 meters in length. Typically used in a wiring closet or data center as a short jumper cable.

1000BASE-SX Cable Standard

Gigabit ethernet using a short-wavelength laser device over multimode fiber optic cable. 50 um core (max 300 meters) or 62.5 um core (max 500 meters). 1000Mbps maximum transfer speed.

1000BASE-LX Cable Standard

Gigabit ethernet using long-wavelength laser transmitters over fiber optic cable. Up to 3,000 meters. Uses singlemode fiber and requires SC connectors for terminating the cable.

10 GBASE-SR Cable Standard

802.3ae standard. 33 meters for 62.5um fiber optic cable, 300 meters for 50um cables. 10 Gbps (Gigabit per second) transfer rate.

10 GBASE-LR Standard

10 Gbps transfer rate. 10 kilometers maximum distance. Fiber optic cable.

10 GBASE-ER Standard

10 Gbps transfer rate. 40 kilometers maximum cable length. Fiber optic cable.

Types of cables

Category 3 cable is what you commonly referred to as "telephone cable." It is a twisted pair cable with a throughput of about 10 Mbps. It has been used in the past for 10Mbps Ethernet and 4Mbps Token Ring networks. Currently not recommended for data networking installations.

Category 5, CAT5, cable is the most data networking cable for ethernet networks. Cat5 has a maximum throughput of 100Mbps. It is a four-pair cable, unshielded twisted pair.

Category 5e, or CAT5 Enhanced, cable is used to achieve 1000Mbps (Gigabit ethernet) in installations. It does have some noise susceptibility problems, but is frequently used in networking installations.

Category 6 cable is the new standard allowing for up to 2.4 Gbps in theory. Each wire is wrapped in foil insulation in a CAT6 cable. Not as popular as CAT5 (primarily due to cost) but for some applications like PoE (Power over Ethernet), CAT6 is a requirement. Cisco IP phones use PoE to deliver power to the telephone. If you implement CAT6, you should make sure your entire infrastructure is CAT6.

Unshield Twisted Pair cables is the cable used to implement 10BaseT and 100BaseT networks. Wires are twisted around each other though each individual wire is not insulated. Commonly used in CAT5 cabling.

Shielded Twisted Pair cables is used in CAT6 cables. Each wire is shielded with a metallic shield to reduce electromagnetic interference. The outer shield may be in the form of a thin metallic mesh in the case of ScTP (Screened Twisted Pair) or a very thin metallic foil in the case of FTP (Foil Twisted Pair).

Coaxial Cables are what you commonly see in a video installation. It is also used in networking. The cabling has a central solid wire core, insulation, and is surrounded by a braided wire conductor sheath. Coaxial cable is relatively resistant to interference. In networking, Coaxial cables use BNC connectors.

Single Mode Fiber (SMF) optical cables are used for long distance and high speed transmissions. This cable is often used in long distance telephone lines. The core diameter is typically less than 10 microns.

Multimode Fiber optical cables are typically used for short distances. It hs a larger core than SFM, typically 50 to 100 microns in size. It can carry about 100 Mbps in a typical short area. Typically used in installations up to 2000 meters in length.

Cable connectors

RJ-11 Connector is commonly used as a telephone connection, the RJ11 connector is smaller than its older brother, the RJ45. Your telephone, answering machine, and modem all have RJ11 connectors.

RJ-45 Connector is your common 10BaseT cable connector for networking. Your computer or laptop has a RJ-45 connection if you have a network card.

F-Type Connector is a threaded connection most often used to link coax cables to home electronics. Also used in the coax network. Your cable box at home? F-Type connector.

ST (Straight Tip) Connector is a fiber optic cable connector. Originally developed by AT&T.

SC (Standard) Connectoris a square shaped push/pull snap-in fiber optic connector.

IEEE 1394 (Firewire) Connector is created by Apple as a high speed cable connection, Firewire is becoming increasingly standard as it is used for fast external drives and digital video editing. Can transmit data up to 400 Mbps.

Fiber Local Connector is the fiber optic cable connector.

MT-RJ Connector is the fiber optic cable connector.

USB Connector is probably the most familiar one to you. Often used in computing for a variety of peripherals including mice, scanners, cameras, etc. USB can transmit up to 12 Mbps and can connect up to 127 peripherals on one port. USB 2.0 can transfer at up to 480 Mbps.

Cable installation guide

When installing cable, the following a few simple rules need to be followed:

1. Always use more cable than you need and leave plenty of slack.

2. Test every part of a network as you install it. Even if it is brand new, it may have problems that will be difficult to isolate later.

3. Stay at least 3 feet away from fluorescent light boxes and other sources of electrical interference.

4. If running cable across the floor, cover the cable with cable protectors.

5. Label both ends of each cable.

6. Use cable ties (not tape) to keep cables in the same location together.

Miscellaneous Cable Information

1. Shielded twisted pair (STP) differs from UTP in that it has a foil jacket that helps prevent crosstalk. Crosstalk is signal overflow from an adjacent wire.

2. The 5-4-3 rule: this rule states that a 10base2 network can have 5 cable segments connected with 4 repeaters, but only 3 of these segments can be occupied by computers. There is also a maximum of 30 computers per segment.

3. Plenum grade cabling is required if the cabling will be run between the ceiling and the next floor (this is called the plenum). Plenum grade cabling is resistant to fire and does not emit poisonous gasses when burned.

4. Fiber Optic cabling has an built in security as you can't intercept data as you can with other cable mediums.

DNS SETTINGS FOR FASTER INTERNET ACCESS

DNS Settings for Faster Internet Access

A handful of DNS hacks for speeding up access to web sites.

You use the Web by typing in hostnames such as www.google.com , but web servers and Internet routers can't understand plain English words, so they need those letters translated into numeric IP addresses. Whenever you type in a hostname, such as www.google.com, it needs to be resolved to its IP address, such as 74.125.236.49(GOOGLE IP ) . DNS servers provide that name resolution automatically and behind the scenes as you surf the Web.

There are several ways you can hack your DNS settings so that you can get faster web access.

5.4.1 Speed Up Web Access with a HOSTS File

It takes time to send your request to a DNS server, have the server look up the proper IP address to resolve the name, and then send the IP address back to your PC. You can eliminate that delay by creating or editing a local HOSTS file on your own PC that contains hostnames and their corresponding IP addresses. When you create one, XP will first look into the HOSTS file to see if there's an entry for the hostname, and, if it finds it, it will resolve the address itself. That way, you won't have to go out to a DNS server and wait for the response before visiting a web site. The HOSTS file is a plain text file you can create or edit with a text editor like Notepad.

You'll find an existing HOSTS file in C:\System32\Drivers\Etc\HOSTS. The file has no extension; it is named only HOSTS. Open it in Notepad and enter the IP addresses and hostnames of your commonly visited web sites, 

like this:

74.125.236.49       www.google.com

69.171.224.14      www.facebook.com

Each entry in the file should be on one line. The IP address should be in the first column, and the corresponding hostname in the next column. At least one space should separate the two columns. You can add comments to the file by preceding the line with a #, in which case the entire line will be ignored by the file, or by putting a # after the hostname, in which case only the comment after will be ignored. You might want to comment on individual entries—for example:

130.94.155.164  gralla.com      #still in beta

When you're finished editing the file, save it to its existing location.

CONFIGURING OUTLOOK FOR GMAIL

Gmail is one of the email services which supports IMAP feature which enables to send and receive emails from Outlook without any ads. Besides one use Outlook for all the business mails and now you can also add your personal gmail account along with it. The advantage of having setup this using IMAP is that when you read a mail or delete a mail, it is synchronized with both the web version of Gmail and the Outlook.

There are lots of features which are different in the new Outlook from Office 2010 than  Outlook 2007 which makes it even more desirable to use Outlook for your Gmail.

Having said that, now lets see How to Setup Gmail IMAP in Outlook 2010?

Before you can start using Gmail IMAP in Outlook, we need to enable IMAP in Gmail settings.

In Gmail, go to Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP –> Make sure Enable IMAP is checked and click on Save Changes if you made any.

If you are starting the Microsoft outlook 2010 for the first time, you will be seeing the following startup screen, just click Next and choose Yes in the next screen where they askwould you like to configure an email account?





Note: If you already have another Email Account or if you have chosen No in the earlier case and has already gone through the initial outlook startup settings before, follow this screenshot else continue to the next one.

Click the Office button on the top left corner and go to the Office Backstage. Under Info –>Account Information –> Click Account Settings and Click on Add Account.



On the Add New Account screen, just choose Manually configure server settings or additional server types and click Next.



Choose Internet E-mail, connect to POP or IMAP server to send and receive e-mail messages and click Next.



Here give the User information, enter your Name, your full email address including @gmail.com or your @custom-mail.com.

Under Server information,

Account Type – IMAP

Incoming mail server – imap.gmail.com

Outgoing mail server (SMTP) – smtp.gmail.com

Also enter the logon information, enter your user name in full and enter the password.

NOTE: Now don’t click Next yet, click on More settings above it.



In the Internet email settings, go to Advanced Tab to change the server port numbers.

Change Incoming server (IMAP) to 993 and use SSL as the encrypted connection.

Change outgoing server (SMTP) to 587 and use TLS as the encrypted connection.



Now go to Outgoing server tab and check My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authenticationand choose Use same settings as my incoming mail server.



Now you should be taken back to the Add new account screen, click on Test Account Settingsand see if everything works without any errors. If there are any errors go back to all the settings and recheck if you have entered correctly.



Click Ok and Finish.



Now you will be taken to the main Outlook window and on the left sidebar a new set of folders will be created to synchronize with the Gmail account. It will also include Drafts, Sent Mail, Spam, Starred, Trash and all other mails synchronized.



Note: If you have a huge Gmail account already, then it will take sometime to download all your email contents from the web server.
Setting up the Sent Items Folder

When you send a mail for the first time, it will ask you where to store the sent mails. Make sure you DO NOT SET the sent mail from Gmail. When you send a mail through outlook, it goes to the gmail server and it saves the sent mails automatically to the sent mail folder. Now if you try to save it again in the sent mail, it will create duplicate copies of the sent mails. So use the Local Folder. See my other post on Choosing the Sent Items Folder while using Gmail in Outlook


Setting up the Deleted Items Folder

In gmail, you can either archive a mail or delete a mail. When you archive a mail, they are removed from the Inbox but they still remain in All Mails folder but when you delete they are moved to the trash mail folder and eventually deleted permanently after 30 days.

Likewise, you can set the action to move the mails to trash folder when you delete them.





If you want to archive a mail but not delete it, I usually have a folder called arhive and move the mails there so that my inbox remains clean and concise.
Folders and Labels

Outlook Folders are equivalent of labels in gmail. If you add a mail to two labels it will be present in both the folders.