Chapter 10

Planning and Cabling

            In planning and cabling your network you need to consider a need of the devices.  One of the primary devices is the Router it is used to interconnect networks. It has the ability to break up domains. Router can have the LAN and WAN interfaces, it forward packets from one network to another based on network layer information. The switch and hub are the devices to be connected to the network. Hub is the intranet device that regenerates and send signal over all ports, it is chosen as the device within a small LAN and has a single collision domain. The Switch on the other hand is much better than hub since each port of the switch creates a separate collision domain, and it has an enhanced performance and reliability makes it cost effective. There were factors need to be considered in selecting devices for a LAN: Cost, speed and types of ports interfaces, expandability, manageability, and additional features and services. If there is a factor in selecting devices for LAN, there were also factors to be considered in choosing a Router: expandability- having an expansion slots for the purpose of adding new modules, operating system features, and media. Planning a LAN installation, have four physical areas: work area, telecommunications room or distribution facility, backbone cabling or vertical cabling, and distribution cabling or horizontal cabling. When it comes to cabling, recommended length was specified that the maximum distance is limited to 100 meters per channel. Cabling is also is one of the significant factors in signal performance, that’s why Electromagnetic Interference and Radio Frequency Interference are taken consideration when choosing a media type for LAN connection.

            When planning had been done, connecting and cabling are follows. Key points to remember is that when you are connecting the same devices a cross over cable is used, and when you are connecting different types of devices you can use straight through cable. The UTP or unshielded twisted pair has two types of interfaces the MDI or MDIX, the Media Independent Interface (MDI) use the Pin 1 and 2 for transmitting while the pins 3 and 6 are use for receiving, this pins are based on the color combination of the UTP cable. In terms of WAN or wide area connection, on the other hand use Data Communication Equipment (DCE) and Data Terminal Equipment. The DCE mostly is at the WAN access provider end of the link, while the DTE is at the WAN customer or user end of the link. After WAN and LAN are being set up, Network addressing is the next. In addressing we all know that before we can create a subnet we should consider first the number of networks and host to fulfill the requirements. After we determine the number of networks we can now then start subnetting the network, we can now then assign the sunetted IP address to the corresponding hosts base on the usable hosts.

Key Terms 

1.      Router- network layer device that uses one or more metrics to determine the optimal path along which network traffic should be forwarded. Routers forward packets from one network layer information. 

2.      DCE- provides a physical connection to the network, forwards traffic, and provides a clocking signal used to synchronize data transmission between DCE and DTE devices. 

3.      DTE-  the interface between the router and the DCE (CSU/DSU). Controls data coming inbound (WAN to LAN) or outbound (LAN to WAN).

4.      EI/RFI-  is noise induced upon signal wires by ambient radio frequency electromagnetic radiation that causes interference in neighboring wires.

 5.      MDI - Medium dependent interface. It is the pinout order on a NIC card on a PC. On hubs or switches it is also known as an uplink port.