Ethernet Cable Types Explained: All You Need To Know

An Ethernet cable or network cable is the medium for wired networks to connect the networking systems and servers together. It plays an integral role in cabling for both residential and commercial purposes. When it comes to using Ethernet cables for setting up network connections, choosing a perfect cable is always a daunting task since there are various Ethernet cables types available for different purposes. According to the bundling types of the twisted pairs, the wiring forms, and the cable speeds or bandwidths, Ethernet cable types on the market can be classified into shielded or unshielded, straight-through or crossover, Cat5/Cat5e/Cat6/Cat7/Cat8 Etherent cables respectively. How to identify the most suitable one for your needs among the diversified Ethernet cable types? This post will give you the answer.

Bundling Types in the Jacket: Shielded vs Unshielded Ethernet Cable

Shielded (STP) Ethernet cables are wrapped in a conductive shield for additional electrical isolation, then bundled in the jacket. The shielding material is used to reduce external interference and the emission at any point in the path of the cable. Unshielded (UTP) Ethernet cables without the shielding material provide much less protection against such interference and the performance is often degraded when interference or disturbance is present. STP cables are more expensive due to the shielding, which is an additional material that goes into every meter of the cable. Compared with the unshielded Ethernet cable, the shielded Ethernet cable is heavier and stiffer, making it more difficult to handle.

Wiring Forms: Crossover Cable vs Straight-through Ethernet Cable

Straight-through cable refers to an Ethernet cable with the pin assignments on each end of the cable. In other words Pin 1 connector A goes to Pin 1 on connector B, Pin 2 to Pin 2 and so on. Straight-through wired cables are most commonly used to connect a host to client.

In contrast, the crossover cables are very much like straight-through cables with the exception that TX and RX lines are crossed (they are at opposite positions on either end of the cable. Using the 568-B standard as an example below you will see that Pin 1 on connector A goes to Pin 3 on connector B. Pin 2 on connector A goes to Pin 6 on connector B and so on. Crossover cables are most commonly used to connect two hosts directly.

Speeds & Bandwidths: Cat5/Cat5e/Cat6/Cat6a/Cat7/Cat8 Ethernet Cable

Defined by the Electronic Industries Association, the standard Ethernet cable types can be divided into Cat5/Cat5e/Cat6/Cat6a/Cat7/Cat8 categories to support current and future network speed and bandwidth requirements.

Cat5 Ethernet Cable

Cat5 Ethernet cable introduced the 10/100 Mbps speed to the Ethernet, which means that the cables can support either 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps speeds. A 100 Mbps speed is also known as Fast Ethernet, and Cat5 cables were the first Fast Ethernet-capable cables to be introduced. Cat5 Ethernet cable can also be used for telephone signals and video, in addition to Ethernet data.

Cat5e Ethernet Cable

Cat5e Ethernet cable is an enhanced version of Cat5 cable to handle a maximum bandwidth of 100 MHz. Cat5e Ethernet cable is optimized to reduce crosstalk, or the unwanted transmission of signals between data channels. Although both Cat5 and Cat5e Ethernet cable types contain four twisted pairs of wires, Cat5 only utilizes two of these pairs for Fast Ethernet, while Cat5e uses all four, enabling Gigabit Ethernet speeds. Cat5e cables are backward-compatible with Cat5 cables, and have completely replaced Cat5 cables in new installations.

Cat6 Ethernet Cable

Cat6 Ethernet cable is certified to handle Gigabit Ethernet with a bandwidth of up to 250 MHz. It has better insulation and thinner wires, providing a higher signal-to-noise ratio. Cat6 Ethernet cables are better suited for environments in which there may be higher electromagnetic interference. Cat6 Ethernet cables can be available in both UTP and STP forms, and they are backward-compatible with both Cat5 and and Cat5e cables.

Cat6a Ethernet Cable

Cat6a Ethernet cable improves upon the basic Cat6 Ethernet cable by allowing 10 Gbps (10,000 Mbps) data transmission rates and effectively doubling the maximum bandwidth to 500 MHz. Category 6a cables are usually available in STP form, therefore they must have specialized connectors to ground the cables.

Cat7 Ethernet Cable

Cat7 Ethernet cable is a fully shielded cable that supports speeds of up to 10,000 Mbps and bandwidths of up to 600 MHz. Cat7 cables consist of a screened, shielded twisted pair (SSTP) of wires, and the layers of insulation and shielding contained within them are even more extensive than that of Cat6 cables.

Cat8 Ethernet Cable

The newly upgraded Cat8 Ethernet cable supports up to 2000MHz and speeds up to 40Gbps over 20 meters. It is fully backward compatible with all the previous categories. With inner aluminum foil wrapped around pairs and outer CCAM braid shielding, the Cat8 Ethernet cable can prevent from electromagnetic and radio frequency interference very well.

Conclusion

When setting up a wired connection in your home or office, you need to obtain the proper Ethernet cable types which can work with your equipment. If you are looking to connect two different devices such as computer to switch or router to hub, the straight-through cable may be the best solution. If you connect two computers together, you will need a crossover cable. The decision over UTP and STP Ethernet cable types depends on how much extent of electrical isolation is needed. When choosing among Cat5/Cat5e/Cat6/Cat7/Cat8 Ethernet cable types, it is undoubted that the more upgraded version can deliver better performance and functionality. It mainly depends on your speed and bandwidth requirement that would suit your equipment best.

Originally published at http://www.fiber-optic-equipment.com/ethernet-cable-types.html

Hub vs Switch vs Router: Which One Is Right for You?

Among many of today’s optical networking devices, some of the terminologies like the switch, hub and router can be quite confusing. Are they the same thing or can they be used interchangeably? Actually, each term above refers to a single device that performs a single function. In this article, we’re gonna explain the concept behind each of these terms, and give a comparison over hub vs switch vs router.

What Are Hub, Switch and Router?

A hub is a networking device that can work in conjunction with a switch or router for the whole network. A hub is a “dumb” device to broadcast whatever it hears on the input port to all the output ports. The good thing about “dumb” devices is that they don’t need a lot of configurations or maintenance. But this leads to collisions between data packets and a general degrading of network quality. If you have a hub set up between your router and the rest of your network, you’re setting yourself up for a huge headache.

A network switch is charged with the job of connecting smaller segments of a single network into a connected whole. It transfers data across a network segment using MAC addresses for reference. Data switches are extensively used in Ethernet local area networks. A data switch operates on the Data Link Layer of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model. This means that data switches are fairly smarter than hubs, as they can route data on a dynamic level. If information is destined for a certain computer, the data switch will only send the data to this computer.

The router is the most complex network connection device among hub vs switch vs router. A router can direct network traffic between components on a local network and a separate network such as a wide area network or the Internet. A router also contains circuitry to determine the quickest paths for routing data. Routers use Ethernet cables to transmit and receive data and in some cases also has the capability for wireless connection to components.

Hub vs Switch

A hub looks just like a switch, but works differently. The hub is connected to other devices using Ethernet cables and any signal sent from a device to the hub is simply repeated out on all other ports connected to the hub. The method in which frames are being delivered differs between hub vs switch. For a hub, a frame is passed along or “broadcast” to every port of it. By contrast, a switch keeps a record of the MAC (Media Access Control) addresses of all the devices connected to it. Therefore, a switch can identify which system is sitting on which port. So when a frame is received, it knows exactly which port to send it to, without significantly increasing network response time.

Switch vs Router

A switch works at Layer 2 of the OSI model (there are also some Layer 3 switches that have routing capacities), which connects one point to another in a network temporarily by turning it on and off as necessary. However, a router works at Layer 3 of the OSI model, thereby it allows you to connect multiple computers to each other and also allows them to share a single Internet connection. Note that a switch only allows you to connect multiple computers into a local network.

Hub vs Router

Hubs are classified as Layer 1 devices per the OSI model, while a router is defined as Layer 3 device. The data that a hub transmits is electrical signal or bits, while a router is designed to receive data packets and determine the network point to which they should be sent in order to arrive at their appropriate destination. A hub has only one broadcast domain, while in router, every port has its own broadcast domain.

Hub vs Switch vs Router: Which One Is Right for You?

In one word, a hub glues together an Ethernet network segment; a switch connects multiple Ethernet segments more efficiently and a router can do those functions plus route TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) packets between multiple LANs and/or WANs as well as much more of course.

Hub vs switch vs router: which one is right for You? For small networks where there are fewer users or devices, a hub can easily cope with the network traffic and is a cheaper option for connecting devices on a network. If more users need to be connected to a network, switches can be used in such situations to extend the number of hubs. If two or more logical subnets need to be connect together, a router would be the first option.

Source: https://community.fs.com/blog/do-you-know-the-differences-between-hubs-switches-and-routers.html

How to Mount a Network Switch to a Rack?

A network switch has been recognized as one of the most important devices for today’s networking technology. It allows simultaneous transmission of multiple packets and partition a network more efficiently than bridges or routers. The rack mount switch can be installed in a standard 19-inch equipment rack or on a desktop or shelf. So how do you mount a network switch to a rack to establish network wiring connections? Here’s a step-by-step guide to teach you how to mount a network switch to a rack.

Preparations Before Mounting the Network Switch

Before rack mounting the switch, please pay attention to the following factors:

• Location: The site should be at the center of all the devices you want to link and near a power outlet, so that it is accessible for installing, cabling and maintaining the devices in the rack.
• Temperature: Since the temperature within a rack assembly may be higher than the ambient room temperature, check that the rack-environment temperature is within the specified operating temperature range (0 to 40 °C).
• Mechanical Loading: Do not place any equipment on top of a rack-mounted unit.
• Circuit Overloading: Be sure that the supply circuit to the rack assembly is not overloaded.
• Grounding: The switch rack should be properly grounded.

How to Mount a Network Switch to a Rack?

Step1. Attaching the Brackets to the Switch

Attach the brackets to the network switch using the screws provided in the mounting accessory.

Step2. Installing the Switch in the Rack

Mount the switch in the rack with the optional rack mount kit, usually using the rack-mounting screws. Be sure to secure the lower rack-mounting screws first to prevent the brackets being bent by the weight of the switch.

Step3. Adding Other Switches into the Rack

If there is only one data switch to be installed in the rack, then you can make the connection to a power source now. If there are multiple switches to be mounted, you need to install the another switch on the top of the first one in the rack, and then attach the power cords.

Step4. Attaching the Power Cords

After you complete mounting all of the switches in the rack, it’s time to connect the switch rack to the power source. Remember to verify that you have the correct power supply (AC-input or DC-input and the correct wattage) for your configuration.

Caution: To prevent bodily injury when mounting or servicing the switches in a rack, you must take special precautions to ensure that the system remains stable. The following guidelines are provided to ensure your safety:

• This network switch should be mounted at the bottom of the rack if it is the only unit in the rack.
• When mounting the switch in a partially filled rack, load the rack from the bottom to the top with the heaviest component at the bottom of the rack.
• If the rack is provided with stabilizing devices, install the stabilizers before mounting or servicing the switches in the rack.

Establishing Network Wiring Connections

After mounting your network switches to a rack, you can establish the network wiring connections according to your requirements now. If you’re using a Gigabit Ethernet switch, it can be connected to 10, 100 or 1000Mbps network interface cards in PCs and servers, as well as to other switches and hubs. It may also be connected to remote devices using optional SFP transceivers. No matter which type of network switches you are using, make sure that they are securely mounted in the rack and connected to the corresponding networking wiring systems.

Source: http://www.fiber-optic-tutorial.com/mount-network-switch-to-rack.html

Proper Horizontal Cable Management for Rack

Cable management is a critical part of network cabling systems that require a large number of moves, adds and changes. The improper cable management may result in cable damage or cause transmission errors and performance issues as well as system downtime. In a horizontal manager system, the cable management for rack is important in telecommunications rooms for leased office space, brokerages and trading houses where the workstations will move or add additional ports frequently. This post will analyze why the horizontal rack cable management is important and offers FS horizontal cable management solutions for rack.

Why Is Proper Horizontal Rack Cable Management Important?

• Poorly routed cables can lead to an assortment of problems over time. Jumbled cables would increase the risk of cables to be tangled up, and a possibility of interruption when reconnecting the cables.
• The rack cable management is directly related to hardware safety. All equipment running on the server rack is going to generate heat, so organizing a rack with a conception involving space will help promote the airflow and hardware management.
• Cable labels in a proper horizontal rack cable management can save a lot of time on troubleshooting. Just imagine how difficult it would be to trace a cable through that mess.
• If rack cables were unorganized, a technician would spend hours tracing wires when something goes wrong. In most circumstances, we can’t afford to stay offline while a technician unravels a tangled nest of cables. Thus a proper horizontal cable management makes it easy for the technician to identify and access where goes wrong and fix it in far less time.

Horizontal Cable Management for Rack: Where to Start with?

Horizontal cable management system is often installed within racks or cabinets to manage cables on front racks and draw cables away from equipment neatly. The rack space of a horizontal cable management infrastructure is typically 1U or 2U high. The following part gives the FS plastic & metal horizontal fiber patch panel, cable managers, lacer panels to promote a proper cable management in your horizontal network cabling systems.

Horizontal Rackmount Fiber Patch Panel

Horizontal rackmount fiber patch panels help to organize cables and eliminate cable stress for your rack enclosure cabinet. FS offers 1U 19’’ blank rackmount fiber patch panels with plastic D-rings on the cable management panel and lacing bar. These rackmount fiber patch panels can be used to organize cables for fiber optic adapters, fiber enclosures, Ethernet switches, WDM chassis, etc.

Horizontal Cable Managers with Finger Duct & Brush Strip

Horizontal cable managers with finger duct and brush strip allow neat and proper routing of the patch cables from equipment in racks and protect cables from damage. Fixed inset fingers on the front and back allow easier access to the ports for moves, adds, and changes. And the brush strip horizontal cable manager is constructed of high-quality steel with high-density nylon bristles, which can promote proper airflow through the rack and meet the demand for front-to-back cable runs.

Horizontal Lacer Panel with D-rings

Horizontal lacer panels are efficient tools for rack or enclosure cabling. These D-rings on the lacer panel are essential to avoid cable strain and prevent damage to the ports on your rack-mount equipment. The five rotating D-rings can be easily assembled or disassembled manually according to your needs.

Conclusion

This post provides users with a horizontal cable management solution that simplifies cable routing in a finished professional appearance. With proper and efficient horizontal cable management tools, cable spaghetti is not a problem anymore. You can just have a peace of mind and reap the great benefits of sound cable management. FS horizontal cable management tools provide an efficient way to manage high performance copper, fiber optic, or coaxial cables on any 1U or 2U rack. For more details, please kindly visit www.fs.com.

Originally published at http://www.fiber-optic-tutorial.com/proper-horizontal-cable-management-rack.html

Cloud Computing vs Big Data: What Is the Relationship?

Cloud computing and big data are two of the most trending terms in the ever-lasting IT sector nowadays. You may think that they both do the same thing but actually, both of them have their own ways to work to perform. Cloud computing vs big data, what are they? What is the relationship between them?

Cloud Computing Tutorial

Cloud computing is a technology used to store data and information on a remote server rather than on a physical hard drive. It uses the servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer. It means accessing resources of organization from any remote location in the world. In simple term accessing RAM, HDD, Processor of organization’s server from laptop, desktop from any of the location where Internet is available.

As shown in the figure above, cloud computing is collection of different services, providing services to end user via the Internet. Services like storage, virtual desktop applications, Web/App hosting process power from servers. In the following architecture, the infrastructure built to provide services is called cloud computing. This infrastructure from where the services gets accessible is front end.

Big Data Wiki

The term big data is very popular nowadays, representing huge sets of data that can be further processed to extract information. Big data carries hidden patterns and algorithms which are unlocked by using various tools available in the market. These data sets are further analyzed to provide business insights. Big data is all about storing and processing of data that is exponentially growing these days. Giants like Google, Facebook are having their own data centers to keep track and to secure their users’ data. That’s also why many big companies are equipped with reliable network equipment (including the server, router or fiber switch) for data storage or traffic forwarding in their data centers. For high performance and cost-effective enterprise routers, Gigabit Ethernet switch and 10gbe switch, FS is a case in point.

Big data requires a large amount of storage space. While the price of storage continued to decline, the resources required to leverage big data can still pose financial difficulties for SMBs (small to medium sized businesses). A typical big data storage and analysis infrastructure will be based on clustered network-attached storage (NAS). Clustered NAS infrastructure requires configuration of several NAS pods with each NAS pod comprised of several storage devices connected to an NAS device. The series of NAS devices are then interconnected to allow massive sharing and searching of data.

Key Comparisons Over Cloud Computing vs Big Data

The cloud computing works in a consolidated manner, while the big data comes under the technology of cloud computing. The crucial difference between cloud computing vs big data is that cloud computing is used to handle the huge storage capacity to provide various flexible and techniques to tackle a magnificent amount of the data. While big data is the information processed with cloud computing platform. The following chart gives a more detailed comparison over cloud computing vs big data.

	Cloud Computing	Big Data
Basic	On-demand services are provided by using integrated computer resources and systems.	Extensive set of structured, unstructured, complex data forbidding the traditional processing technique to work on it.
Purpose	Enable the data to be stored and processed on the remote server and accessed from any place.	Organization of the large volume of data and information to the extract hidden valuable knowledge.
Working Mode	Distributed computing is used to analyse the data and produce more useful data.	Internet is used to provide the cloud-based services.
Benefits	Low maintenance expense, centralized platform, provision for backup and recovery.	Cost effective parallelism, scalable, robust.
Challenges	Availability, transformation, security, charging model.	Data variety, data storage, data integration, data processing, and resource management.

Cloud Computing vs Big Data: They Work Hand in Hand

Both cloud computing and big data are good at their marks. Cloud computing vs big data: they differ from each other but work hand in hand. They are the perfect combination for data storage and processing. The cloud computing has been a precursor and facilitator to the emergence of big data. If big data is the content, then cloud computing is the infrastructure.

Originally published at http://www.fiber-optic-tutorial.com/cloud-computing-vs-big-data-relationship.html

VLAN Configuration Guidelines on Layer 3 Switch

As networks grow larger and larger, scalability becomes an issue. Every device in the network needs to send broadcasts to communicate in a broadcast domain . As more devices are added to the broadcast domain, more broadcasts start to saturate the network. In this case, VLAN (Virtual LAN) is needed to separate broadcast domains virtually, eliminating the need to create completely separate hardware LANs to overcome this large-broadcast-domain issue. In this post, we’re gonna expound the motivators to deploy VLAN and how to set up VLAN configuration step by step.

Motivators to Implement VLAN

VLAN is a way of creating multiple virtual switches inside one physical data switch. There are a lot of reasons to implement VLAN, some of which are listed as follows.

• Link Utilization: Link utilization is another big reason to use VLANs. Spanning tree by function builds a single path through your layer 2 network to prevent loops. If you have multiple redundant links to your aggregating devices then some of these links will go unused. To get around this you can build multiple STP topology with different VLANs.
• Service Separation: If you have IP security cameras, IP Phones, and Desktops all connecting into the same switch it might be easier to separate these services out into their own subnet. This would also allow you to apply QoS markings to these services based on VLAN instead of some higher layer service. You can also apply ACLs on the device performing Layer 3 routing to prevent communication between VLANs that might not be desired.
• Subnet Size: If a single site becomes too large you can break that site down into different VLANs which will reduce the number of hosts that see need to process each broadcast.

VLAN Configuration Guidelines on Layer 3 Switch

Configuring two or more VLANs to communicate with each other requires the use of either a VLAN-aware router or a Layer 3 switch. VLAN configuration can be accomplished either in CLI interface or in Web interface. The following video is a VLAN configuration example on FS S5800/S5850 10 gigabit switch.

Configure VLAN in CLI (command-line interface)

Here we take FS S5850-32S2Q Layer 3 switch as an example to configure VLAN. To create a VLAN via CLI interface, SecureCRT software is required to enter CLI interface, then perform the VLAN configuration command in the chart below:

Procedure	Command	Purpose
Step 1	Set the parameters of COM2 port	Quick connect on startup
Step 2	#enter	Enter CLI interface
Step 3	#configure terminal	Enter the global configure mode
Step 4	#vlan database	Enter VLAN configure mode
Step 5	#show vlan all	Check the details of all VLANs on the switch

Configure VLAN in Web Interface

Configuring VLAN in Web Interface is quite simple. Just perform the following two steps and you would see the basic info of the VLAN that is created.

Step 1: Log in the Web user interface using the account and password

Step 2: Find the service management and create a new VLAN, and set its ID as 10 or 20.

Note: Ports configured to use VLAN 10 act as if they're connected to the exact same switch. Ports in VLAN 20 can not directly talk to ports in VLAN 10. They must be routed between the two or have a link that bridges the two VLANs

Summary

VLAN deployments make it easy for network engineers to partition a single switched network to match the functional and security requirements of their systems without having to run new cables or make major changes in their current network infrastructure. The proper VLAN configuration on Layer 3 switches ensures reliable and secure data link access to all hosts connected to switch ports. Knowing more about VLAN configuration would allow you to use them when you need them and to use them correctly when you do.

Source: http://www.fiber-optic-tutorial.com/vlan-configuration-guidelines-layer-3-switch.html

LAN vs WAN vs MAN: Which One to Choose?

Network is essential for establishing communications among devices such as computers, routers, or fiber switches to operate over the area they cover. LAN ((Local Area Network), WAN (Wide Area Network) and MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) are the three most prevalent types of networks that are utilized today. There are some similarities and differences between them. LAN vs WAN vs MAN, which one should you choose?

What Is LAN?

LAN is an interconnection of a group of related networking devices within a small geographical area where the distance between these devices is small. Some of the LANs also cover the networks in office , school, and home. Most of the LANs are built for the purpose of sharing vital resources such as printers and exchanging files.

LAN is also widely used to provide services such as sharing computer applications, gaming and accessing the internet. This type of network is under the control of one administrator who is in charge of the configurations and settings and other devices connected through Ethernet cables and wireless routers.

What Is WAN?

WAN is a kind of network connection between multiple networking devices over a large geographical area. The connection can be between different cities or even countries. A WAN network can be a collection of small networks that have been combined, or it can be as a result of various private business entities. One good example of WAN is the internet, since it connects computers from different corners of the world.

The WAN network is too complex to be managed by private administrators. Therefore, WANs usually have a public ownership, where network devices in this network can be connected either by cables or through a wireless connection.

What Is MAN?

As the name suggests, MAN is a type of network that connects network devices within a specific geographical area. MAN lies in between LAN and WAN. The area covered by MAN network is larger than that in LAN but smaller than that in WAN. MANs are mostly used to provide fast connections to cities and large institutions.

MAN experiences comparatively high speeds to facilitate fast sharing of resources such as files within a city. One main disadvantage of the MAN is the high cost. The technology deployed for MAN network is pricier than that of LAN and WAN.

Key Comparison Between LAN vs WAN vs MAN

LAN vs WAN vs MAN, there are similarities and differences between them as listed in the chart below.

Parameter	LAN	MAN	WAN
Ownership of Network	Private	Private or Public	Private or Public
Design and Maintenance	Easy	Difficult	Difficult
Propagation Delay	Short	Moderate	Long
Speed	High	Moderate	Low
Congestion	Less	More	More
Application	College, School, Hospital	Small towns, City	Country/Continent

Conclusion

Generally speaking, there are many advantages of LAN over MAN and WAN. LAN provides excellent reliability, high data transmission rate, and they can easily be managed. However, LAN cannot cover cities or towns and for that MAN is needed, which can connect city or a group of cities together. WAN is not restricted to a geographical location, although it might be confined within the bounds of a state or country. No matter which kind of network you choose, the routers or network switches you choose should be eligible to better satisfy your demand for network architecture. FS provides high performance gigabit PoE switch, 10 gigabit switch, 40 gigabit switch,etc. If you have any requirement, you can kindly visit www.fs.com.