Computer Networks for IBPS Specialist Officers - Transmission Media

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Friends, we have already discussed about the basic concepts and the OSI models of computer networks. Today we shall discuss another important topic of Computer Networks, i.e., Transmission Media. In simple words we can say that a Transmission medium is the physical path between the transmitter and receiver in a data transmission system. Confused ? let it be simple... All of us know that Computer Networks are useful to establish communication between two or more computers. That means one computer has to send the data and the other computer has to receive it and vice versa. Assume that the Computer A has sent some message to Computer B. That means the message leaves the Computer A and reaches Computer B. So the message is traveling between the Computers A and B. This traveling path is called the medium. This medium can be of any type. Either it may be wired (made of some metal) or some times the air (wireless). Now lets get back to our topic.

Media / Medium is the general term used to describe the data path that forms the physical channel between sender and receiver. Transmission media can be either wired (transmitting data using wires) or wireless (simply throwing data into the air so that the receiver will receive it), wire media are referred to as bounded media and wireless media are sometimes referred to as unbounded media. Here are a few more important points about transmission media.

• Different types of transmission media is used for different data transfer rates and long distances. Bandwidth, noise, radiation and attenuation are considered while using the different transmission media.
• Higher bandwidth transmission media support higher data rates.
• Attenuation limits the usable distance that data can travel on the media. Noise is related to electrical signal noise that can cause distortion of the data signal and data errors.
• Radiation is the leakage of signal from the media caused by undesirable electrical characterisitcs of the transmission media.
• The transmission medium is the physical path between transmitter and receiver in a data transmission system. In transmission medium, communication is in the form of electromagentic waves.
• The characteristics and quality of transmission are determined both by the characteristics of the medium and the characteristics of signal.

Classification of Transmission media 

As stated above, the transmission medium can be mainly classified into two types

1. Bounded or Guided Media : Depending on the type of transmission medium used the bounded media can be further classified into three types. 
1. Twisted pair cable
2. Co-axial cable
3. Fiber optic cable
2. Unbounded or unguided media : Depending on the method of transmission the unbounded media can be further classified into two types. 
1. Microwave links or Radio links
2. Infrared

That's all for now friends. In our next post we shall see the details of above mentioned types of transmission media along with the factors which effect the selection of transmission media. Happy Reading :)

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