TWISTED PAIR

 

ADVANTAGES	DISADVANTAGES
It is a thin, flexible cable that is easy to string between walls.	Twisted pair's susceptibility to the electromagnetic interference greatly depends on the pair twisting schemes (usually patented by the manufacturers) staying intact during the installation. As a result, twisted pair cables usually have stringent requirements for maximum pulling tension as well as minimum bend radius. This relative fragility of twisted pair cables makes the installation practices an important part of ensuring the cable's performance.
Because UTP is small, it does not quickly fill up wiring ducts.	In video applications that send information across multiple parallel signal wires, twisted pair cabling can introduce signaling delays known as skew which results in subtle color defects and ghosting due to the image components not aligning correctly when recombined in the display device. The skew occurs because twisted pairs within the same cable often use a different number of twists per meter so as to prevent common-mode crosstalk between pairs with identical numbers of twists. The skew can be compensated by varying the length of pairs in the termination box, so as to introduce delay lines that take up the slack between shorter and longer pairs, though the precise lengths required are difficult to calculate and vary depending on the overall cable length.
UTP costs less per meter/foot than any other type of LAN cable

 

 

 

COLOXIAL CABLE

 

ADVANTAGES	DISADVANTAGES
the nature of the medium makes it highly immune to interference	slightly more expensive than twisted pair.
with a high signal-to-noise ratio, coaxial cable can support fairly high data rates	Thicknet is a significantly thicker cable, with a solid, inflexible core.
Over limited distances, coaxial cable can be pushed into the low gigabit per second (Gbps) range	It was much more difficult to pull than thinnet cable, and significantly more difficult to pull than twisted pair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIBER OPTIC CABLE

 

ADVANTAGES	DISADVANTAGES
Lower cost in the long run	High investment cost
Low loss of signal (typically less than 0.3 dB/km), so repeater-less transmission over long distances is possible	Need for more expensive optical transmitters and receivers
Large data-carrying capacity (thousands of times greater, reaching speeds of up to 1.6 Tb/s in field deployed systems and up to 10 Tb/s in lab systems)	More difficult and expensive to splice than wires
Signals contain very little power	Cannot carry electrical power to operate terminal devices. However, current telecommunication trends greatly reduce this concern: availability of cell phones and wireless PDAs; the routine inclusion of back-up batteries in communication devices; lack of real interest in hybrid metal-fiber cables; and increased use of fiber-based intermediate systems.