Coaxial – popular in the 1970’s and 1980’s – resistant to electromagnetic interference (EMI), high bandwidth, expensive compared to twisted pair
Baseband – one signal at a time, digital
Broadband – multiple signals, analog
UTP – unshielded twisted pair
STP – shielded twisted pair
Cable Types / Naming Convention:
XXyyyyZZ – xx: max speed, yyyy: baseband or broadband, ZZ: distance or technology
| Type | Max Speed | Distance | Installation Difficulty | EMI Vulnerability | Note |
| 10Base2 | 10 MBps | 185 m | Medium | Medium | Coaxial thinnet |
| 10Base5 | 10 MBps | 500 m | High | Low | Coaxial Thicknet |
| 10BaseT (UTP) | 10 MBps | 100 m | Low | High | |
| STP | 155 Mbps | 100 m | Medium | Medium | |
| 100BaseT/TX | 100 Mbps | 100 m | Low | High | |
| 1000BaseT | 1 Gbps | 100 m | Low | High | |
| Fiber-Optic | 2+ Gbps | 2+ km | Med-High | None |
| UTPÂ Categories | ||
| Cat | Throughput | Notes |
| 1 | Voice only | Modems only, not network |
| 2 | 4 MBps | Host-to-terminal mainframes; not network |
| 3 | 10 MBps | 10BaseT Ethernet networks, telephone |
| 4 | 16 MBps | Token ring networks |
| 5 | 100 MBps | 100BaseTX, FDDI, ATM networks |
| 5e | 100-1000 MBps | 5 enhanced |
| 6 | 1000 MBps | High-speed networks |
| 7 | 10 GBps | 10 Gigabit speed networks |
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