Physical Networking Week 4 Home Work Assignment

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Unit 4 Assignment 1 Copper vs. Fiber Pape The two most common and widely used cabling types today for the means of communication all over the world are copper and fiber. They both do the same thing, transmit information from point A to point B but both have their strengths and weaknesses and therefore, a person installing cabling may be reluctant to choose one over the other. Copper cabling is less expensive to install. Copper wiring is flexible when installing so incase a technician has to bend it around a wall or at a certain angle to reach it to an end point, the cable can handle it. Also equipment to support copper wiring is relatively inexpensive to run. The weaknesses to copper wiring would be that it is susceptible to electromagnetic inference (EMI) from outside forces and also has a higher rate of corrosion over time by oxidation. Fiber optic cabling is a more expensive option for communications. Fiber optic cabling is immune to EMI and other noise interferences and therefore the chance of signal loss is greatly reduced. One drawback on this type of cabling is that just like its copper; fiber optic cabling is very durable and tough making it harder to work with when it comes to installing it. A technician will have to be very well trained in handling it to get the most out of it for the customer. But fiber optic cabling has a much higher bandwidth over copper so it can handle much more traffic as well as at higher speeds than copper wiring. In the real world, one might choose one cabling type over the other. For example, a customer in a single family home with a few laptops and a desktop computer, along with television service and phone service may opt for copper cabling since its inexpensive to install and would be just enough for what the customer is looking for in a small home network with speed and bandwidth size. On the other hand with something

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