While most of the world is spending all its time and energy in glorifying the advances in wireless technology, no discovery has yet been able to revolutionise the entire world to an extent that cables become an obsolete part of networks. The fact that we still need wires and cables to interlink mot of our day to day devices is enough to state how important cabling could be for us. Network cables are the means by which two devices are connected to each other. This connection is established in order to enable sharing of data and information between two devices. There are many different kinds of network cables that are used as per the need and requirement. The most common kinds of cables are the optical fibre cables, coaxial cables and the twisted pair cables. Their usage depends upon the topology of the network; the size and he protocol of the network as well. There is no doubt that the future holds great scope and potential for the development of wireless technologies but the reality is that at present, we still make use of cables to transfer signals between two different points or locations. The different mediums by means of which two computers can be connected are twisted pair, fibre optic cables, coaxial cables etc.
Cables are the devices which act as the medium for the transfer of information from one device on the network to another. In one single network, it can be possible that different types of cables are used. As far as connection of the LAN is concerned, various kinds of cables are used for the connections. The selection of any particular cable is dependent on the dimensions of size required, protocol chosen or the topology of the network. For a network to be successful, it is required that the choice of the cable be made sensibly. The properties of coaxial cables are that although they are difficult to install, but there resistance to signal interference is minimum. Also, the length of the cable wire that can be effectively supported between different devices is longer than that supported by the twisted pair cables. The fibre optic cables have revolutionised the way in which data is transmitted from one point to another by broadening the various possibilities for communication. But the problem with these fibre optic cables is that they are difficult to install.