Comparison of UTP, Coaxial, and Fiber Optic Cabling Types

This article compares the pros and cons of Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP), Coaxial, and Fiber Optic cabling types. It discusses the construction, speed, bandwidth, distance, cost, installation, end devices, and conversion of each type. UTP is flexible and easy to install but has certain attenuation problems and works on low bandwidth. Coaxial cable has less interference but can only be used for short distances and is bulky. Fiber optic has better performance and higher bandwidth but is expensive and difficult to install. Optical fiber is used in many telecommunications companies to transmit telephone or television signals. Twisted pair cables are used for both analog and digital signals and are used for short distances. UTP is used as the last mild option in homes and offices and is most popular to use in homes. Media converters are basically used to convert copper-based signals and optical fiber. For cabling equipment need to be purchased, the equipment that is used for transferring data traffic between workstations, file servers, and internet links are repeaters, chassis, workgroup concentrators, media interference, switches, and multi-port repeaters.