Dirt Roads Versus the DOT
You can spend a long time working around or in the networking
arena and not ever need to worry about how structured cabling works. This
section gives you a brief glimpse into the world of structured cabling, just so
you know what people are talking about if they bring it up.
You can go to the store and buy premade Ethernet UTP cables
with RJ-45 connectors on them. You can even buy a huband for not a lot of money,
typically less than $20. You could then connect a bunch of computers to the hub
using the straight-through Ethernet cables, and voilà, you have a network, or at
least the part that allows the computers to send and receive data. Running your
own cabling is quick and easy.
In a real network in a real building, you will not typically
get away with stringing cables on top of the carpet, over people's cubicles, and
so on. Instead, you should allow the electricians to do their job right, which
means that the cables will run either under the floor or inside the ceiling.
Also, instead of a single cable from a PC to the hub, the equivalent will be
created. First, you install a short cable from the PC to a wall plate. The
electrician runs another cable from the back of the wall plate to the wiring
closet into a patch panel. Finally, either the electrician or the network
engineer connects a cable from the patch panel in the wiring closet to the hub.
Together, these cables provide two twisted pair between the PC NIC and the hub.
Figure 4-13 shows the major
components.
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