What is The Difference Between Ethernet And Coax?

When ask­ing what the dif­fer­ence is between Eth­er­net and coax, there is no one answer as this ques­tion has some lay­ers to it. Eth­er­net is a method of net­work com­mu­ni­ca­tion that can be car­ried by many dif­fer­ent cables, includ­ing coax­i­al cables.

In mod­ern slang, though, “Eth­er­net cables” refer to twist­ed pair cables, usu­al­ly used to net­work devices togeth­er, while coax­i­al cables refer to high-fre­quen­cy shield­ed cables, and are used to con­nect rooms or build­ings.

What is Eth­er­net?

Com­mer­cial­ly intro­duced in 1980, Eth­er­net is a net­work­ing tech­nol­o­gy that divides data into pack­ets called “frames.” Each frame con­tains actu­al data, meta­da­ta about the sender and receiv­er, and back­up data to check for errors. A device that receives a data checks to see if it is from an appro­pri­ate sender, ver­i­fies that noth­ing has been cor­rupt­ed, and then adds it to pre­vi­ous­ly decod­ed frames to pro­duce a con­stant stream. Eth­er­net is nor­mal­ly used in local area net­works (LANs) and met­ro­pol­i­tan area net­works (MANs). LANs are net­works that link devices with­in a build­ing or group of neigh­bour­ing build­ings while MANs is a net­work that is designed to link an entire city.

Eth­er­net con­tin­ues to be the tech­nol­o­gy of choice when it comes to link­ing local area net­works because of its com­pat­i­bil­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty with net­work­ing pro­to­cols. This has a lot of advan­tages over oth­er net­work­ing meth­ods. Even if the cable is not per­fect­ly shield­ed, the abil­i­ty to ver­i­fy frames pre­vents any one bad pack­et of data from cor­rupt­ing the whole stream. From a secu­ri­ty point of view, it is dif­fi­cult to tap into data that’s marked for a spe­cif­ic receiv­er.

Eth­er­net has been pre­vi­ous­ly used with coax­i­al cables but has become so advanced that heav­i­ly shield­ed cables are no longer need­ed. Instead, it usu­al­ly uses twist­ed pair cables.

What are Eth­er­net cables used for?

These cables are used on wired net­works to con­nect devices like PCs, routers and switch­es to LANs. There are dif­fer­ent types of Eth­er­net cables, the most com­mon­ly used being the Cat­e­go­ry 5 (CAT5) and the Cat­e­go­ry 6 (CAT6). Gen­er­al­ly, Eth­er­net cables are made to con­nect only one device but you can also use a crossover cable which is a spe­cial Eth­er­net cable designed to con­nect two com­put­ers to each oth­er.

Eth­er­net cables are made in two forms. First, the sol­id form which offers bet­ter per­for­mance and improved pro­tec­tion from elec­tri­cal inter­fer­ence. This type of Eth­er­net cable is more com­mon­ly found in busi­ness net­works where wiring is inside office walls or under lab floors teth­ered to fixed loca­tions. The sec­ond form of Eth­er­net cable is the strand­ed type. Strand­ed cables are less like­ly to incur dam­age such as cracks and breaks. They are typ­i­cal­ly used by trav­ellers or in a home net­work­ing sit­u­a­tion.

Twist­ed pair cables are, as you guessed, a pair twist­ed togeth­er, like a DNA dou­ble helix. This twist cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion where the fields pro­duced by the cables large­ly can­cel each oth­er out. For Inter­net use, busi­ness­es use Cat­e­go­ry 6 cables that can reach for about 175 feet before the inter­fer­ence becomes too severe. 175 feet is more than enough for most small busi­ness­es, so peo­ple opt to just use twist­ed pair cables to build a net­work.

With a large office build­ing, coax­i­al cables are more use­ful.

Coax­i­al Cables

Coax­i­al Cables use one cable as a wrap­around shield that pro­tects the oth­er. Coax cables are high­ly shield­ed and can car­ry a sig­nal for huge dis­tances. Large office build­ings use these cables to link up a large floor, or mul­ti­ple-floor, net­works.

Coax­i­al cables con­tain an inner con­duc­tor that is encased by a tubu­lar insu­lat­ing lay­er, fenced by a tubu­lar con­duct­ing shield. The name “coax” refers to the fact that these two lay­ers, the out­er sheath and the con­duc­tor beneath it, share a geo­met­ric axis. Coax­i­al cables have actu­al­ly been in exis­tence since the 1880s when math­e­mati­cian and engi­neer Oliv­er Heav­i­side patent­ed their design.

What’s the dif­fer­ence between coax and oth­er shield­ed cables?

The dimen­sions of coax cables are con­trolled unlike with oth­er shield­ed cables. By con­trol­ling the cable’s dimen­sions, you get pre­cise and con­stant con­duc­tor spac­ing. This is very impor­tant to cre­ate effec­tive func­tion­al­i­ty when car­ry­ing low­er-fre­quen­cy trans­mis­sion sig­nals.

What are coax­i­al cables used for?

Gen­er­al­ly, coax cables are used for audio and visu­al func­tions. In mod­ern homes, you will find at least one coax out­let in each room. Cable com­pa­nies usu­al­ly use coax­i­al cables to con­nect a sig­nal direct­ly from the wall out­let to your tele­vi­sion or cable box. Back in the day, coax cables were used to attach anten­nas to TVs or dig­i­tal con­vert­er box­es. They were also used to con­nect VCRs to a TV, but who has one of those any­more?

Coax­i­al cables are prici­er, unfor­tu­nate­ly, run­ning you between 75 cents and per foot, com­pared to the 15–50 cents for a twist­ed pair cable. This adds up in a large oper­a­tion but is often unavoid­able.