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Computer Networks I

application

transport network link physical

Transmission Media

Fernando.Rincon@uclm.es

Outline

Transmission medium

Some informal definitions Guide Media Unguided Media: Wireless References

Anything that can carry information from a source to a destination Background

19th century - Morse's telegraph (metallic medium) 1869 Bell's telephone (also metallic medium) 1895 Hertz radio transmission (wireless)

Later Marconi applied Hertz discover to the telegraph

Physical layer

Transmission channel Cable or air

Physical layer

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Transmission channel

Bandwidth

Data are transmitted through electromagnetic waveform propagation Channels have limited transmission capacity (bandwidth) And take certain delay to reach the destination Signals in the channel can be affected by

Amount of information that can flow through a connection in a limited time It matters because

Is limited by physics & technology Is not free Requirements grow at a rapid rate Critical to network performance

Noise Atenuation Distorsion

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Bandwidth

Bandwidth

Measured in bits per second (bps)

For analog communications

It is expressed using a range:

Ex: 3 kHz to 300 kHz

And measured in Hertz (Hz)

Depends mainly:

on the transmission medium type of technology and protocol

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Transmission media

Guided media
Source and destination linked through a conduit

Transmission Media

Metallic conduit

Twisted-pair cable Coaxial cable Fiber-optic cable

Guided (wired)

Unguided (wired)

Glass/plastic conduit

Twisted-pair cable

Coaxial cable

Fiber-optic cable

Free space

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Twisted pair

Cable specifications
T: twisted-pair F: Fiber-Optic

Twisting provides shielding against noise & interferences The most common type is unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) The standard categorizes the UTP into 7 classes
Category Cat1 Cat2 Cat3 Cat4 Cat5 Cat5e Cat6 Cat6e Cat6a Cat7 Cat7a Bandwidth 0.4 MHz ? MHz 16MHz 20MHz 100MHz 100MHz 250MHz 250MHz 500MHz 600MHz 1200MHz Applications Telephone and modem lines Older terminal systems, e.g. IBM 3270 10BASE-T and 100BASE-T4 Ethernet 16 Mbit/s Token Ring 100BASE-TX & 1000BASE-T Ethernet 100BASE-TX & 1000BASE-T Ethernet 1000BASE-T Ethernet 10GBASE-T (under development) Ethernet 10GBASE-T (under development) Ethernet No applications yet. Telephone, CATV, 1000BASE-T in the same cable.

10 BASE-T

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Twisted pair

Coaxial cable

The most common UTP connector is the RJ45 Performance:

Supports higher frequency signal ranges than twisted-pair Most common connector BNC Performance

Relation between attenuation (db/Km) and frequency Sharply decreases with frequencies above 100KHz

Higher bandwidth than twisted-pair But also higher attenuation Digital telephonic networks (nowadays replaced) Local area networks (10Base-2) Cable TV

Applications

Voice & data through telephone lines DSL for high-bandwidth Local area networks
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Applications

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Fiber-Optic cable

Fiber-Optic cable

Made of glass or plastic Signals are transmitted in the form of light, using refraction capabilities of the material
Multimode
(multiple beams using different paths)

Performace:

Up to 1600Gps data transfers. Limited by the electronics, not the medium Better attenuation than twisted-pair. 10 times less repeaters for the same cable length Backbone networks (good relationship between bandwidth & cost) Cable TV Local-area networks 100Base-Fx 1000Base-X

Applications

Single Mode

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Fiber-Optic cable

Guided media comparison

Other advantages

Coaxial cable

Immunity to electromagnetic interference Resistance to corrosive materials Light weight Installation & maintenance expertise required Unidirectional light propagation Cost. Only justifiable for high-bandwidth requirements
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Hardly used nowadays Highest bandwidth but the most expensive Immune to electromagnetic distortions Easy to connect Cheap electronics
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Fiber-Optic cable

Some disadvantages

Twisted-pair cable

Unguided media

Wireless propagation methods

Transport electromagnetic waves without a physical conductor Also referred as wireless communication Use a part of the electromagnetic spectrum

Ground propagation:

Lowest portion of the atmosphere Signals follow the curvature of the earth Higher frequency signals raise up to the ionosphere Greater distance with lower output power. Highest frequency but shorter range
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Sky propagation

Line-of-sight (visual) propagation

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Wireless bands

Wireless transmission waves

Band VLF (very low frequency) LF (low frequency) MF (middle frequency) HF (high frequency) VHF (very high frequency) UHF (ultrahigh frequency) SHF (superhigh frequency)

Range 3-30 Khz 30-300 Khz 300 Khz 3 Mhz 3-30 Mhz 30-300 Mhz 300 Mhz 3 Ghz 3-30 Ghz

Propagation ground ground sky sky Line-of-sight Line-of-sight Line-of-sight

Application Long-range radio navigation Radio beacons & navigational locators AM radio Citizens band (CB), shift/spacecraft comm. UHF-TV, cellular phones, satellite Satellite comm. Radar, satellite

Wireless transmission

Sky & line-of-sight VHF-TV, FM radio

Radio wave

Microwave

Infrared

EHF (extremely high frequency) 30-300 Ghz

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Radio wave

Microwave

They range from 3 kHz to 1 GHz Transmitted through omnidirectional antennas Can travel long distances and penetrate walls (good for AM radio, for instance) Very sensible to interference Almost the entire band is regulated form authorities Applications:

They range from 1 GHz to 300 GHz Unidirectional => Antennas must be aligned Propagation is line-of-sight (earth curvature is a problem) Cannot penetrate walls Higher data range than radio waves Part of the spectrum is regulated form authorities

TV & radio broadcasting Cordless phones

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Infrared

References
B.F. Transmisin de datos y redes de comunicaciones, 3th edition 2007.

They range from 300 GHz to 400 THz Used for short range communication Low interference between different systems Very high data rate

Chapter 7

A.S. Redes de computadores. Pearson, 4th edition, 2003.

Chapter 2: Sections 2.2 and 2.3

CISCO Networking Academy e-learning.

Module 8 CCNA Exploration

All unlabeled figures are taken from the Wikipedia.

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