Glossary

A covering over the core assembly that may include one or more metallic members, strength members, or jackets.

A shallow tray used to support and route cables through building spaces and above network racks.

A map of how cabling is run through a building network

The buildings and grounds of a complex, such as a university, college, industrial park, or military establishment.

Cabling between buildings that share data and telecommunications facilities.

The ISO/IEC 11801 term for the main cross-connect; this is the distributor from which the campus backbone cable emanates.

The ability of a dielectric material between conductors to store electricity when a difference of potential exists between the conductors. The unit of measurement is the farad, which is the capacitance value that will store a charge of a one coulomb when a one-volt potential difference exists between the conductors. In AC, one farad is the capacitance value, which will permit one ampere of current when the voltage across the capacitor changes at a rate of one volt per second.

An electrical signal of a set frequency that can be modulated in order to carry voice, video, and/or data.

Equipment or a circuit that detects the presence of a carrier signal on a digital or analog network.

With Ethernet, a method of detecting the presence of signal activity on a common channel.

A network media access method that sends a request to send (RTS) packet and waits to receive a clear to send (CTS) packet before sending. Once the CTS is received, the sender sends the packet of information. This method is in contrast to CSMA/CD, which merely checks to see if any other stations are currently using the media.

A network media access method employed by Ethernet. CSMA/CD network stations listen for traffic before transmitting. If two stations transmit simultaneously, a collision is detected and each station waits a brief (and random) amount of time before attempting to transmit again.

Also called CAT-1. Unshielded twisted pair used for transmission of audio frequencies up to 1MHz. Used as speaker wire, doorbell wire, alarm cable, etc. Category 1 cable is not suitable for networking applications or digital voice applications. See Chapter 1 for more information. Not a recognized media by ANSI/TIA-568-C.

Also called CAT-2. Unshielded twisted pair used for transmission at frequencies up to 4MHz. Used in analog and digital telephone applications. Category 2 cable is not suitable for networking applications. See Chapter 1 for more information. Not a recognized medium by ANSI/TIA-568.C.

Also called CAT-3. Unshielded twisted pair with 100 ohm impedance and electrical characteristics supporting transmission at frequencies up to 16MHz. Used for 10Base-T Ethernet and digital voice applications. Recognized by the ANSI/TIA-568-C standard. See Chapters 1 or 7 for more information.