The Equivalent of Asphalt: Cables

The Equivalent of Asphalt: Cables

You can get in your car and drive around your yard, the sidewalk, in your neighbor's yard, or through the park. Of course, it's better if you drive on the road! The earlier examples in this chapter showed NICs using a single copper wire for data transmission in each direction. But rather than just have a couple of wires somehow stuck into the side of the cards, in real life, we use cabling and connectors to manage the wires, making the job of the electrician much more comfortable and convenient.

The copper wires that networking cards use are encased inside a cable. The cable is made from plastic, with the copper wires inside the cable. Figure 4-5 shows a drawing of the most popular type of cabling used for LANs today.