Managing Twisted-Pair Cabling
Changing from coaxial cable to twisted-pair cable did more than rationalize the cabling layout of Ethernet LANs. It improved LAN reliability, availability, and manageability.
A coax bus is vulnerable to cable or connector flaws that can shut down or degrade the performance of the entire LAN. These flaws have always been hard to track down.
Faults still happen in twisted-pair LANs, but the effect of a fault is limited. A cable failure between a hub or switch port and a station affects only that station. Link integrity tests detect a cable failure very quickly. Using an SNMP management station or checking LED lights can pinpoint a trouble spot.
A fault on a link between hubs or bridges temporarily can segment the ...
Get Local Area High Speed Networks now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
