If you want to know the difference between coaxial cable and optical cable, you must first know what is coaxial cable? What is optical cable? Let's take a look at the introduction of coaxial cable and optical cable.

Coaxial cable consists of a hollow metal tube (outer conductor) and a hard copper wire (inner conductor). The inner conductor is located in the center of the metal round tube, and the inner and outer conductors are insulated with polyethylene plastic gaskets. There are three types of coaxial cables used in local area networks: 75Ω, 50Ω and 93Ω. RG59 type 75Ω cable is a standard cable used in common antenna television system (CATV). It is often used to transmit analog signals generated by frequency division multiplexing (FDM), and the frequency can reach 300 ~ 400MHz. It is called broadband transmission and can also be used to transmit digital signals. . 50Ω coaxial cable is divided into thick cable (RG-8 type or RG-11 type) and thin cable (RG-58 type). Thick cable has good anti-interference performance, long transmission distance, low price of thin cable, short transmission distance, and the transmission rate is generally 10Mbps, which is suitable for and network. The RG-62 type 93Ω cable is the coaxial cable used in the Arcnet network, and is usually only suitable for baseband transmission, with a transmission rate of 2 to 20M bps.

Optical fiber cable is the abbreviation of optical fiber cable, which is a medium for transmitting optical signals. The core is made of silicon dioxide doped with germanium, phosphorus and other materials, and is cylindrical. The outer cladding is made of pure silica, which refracts the light signal into the core. There are two types of optical fibers: single-mode and multi-mode. Single-mode only provides one optical path, and multi-mode has multiple optical paths. Single-mode fiber has large capacity and is expensive. At present, the size of single-mode fiber core and cladding is about 8.3μm/125μm , the commonly used multimode fiber core is 62.5μm/125μm. Optical fiber can only be used for one-way transmission. If two-way communication is required, it should be used in pairs. The domestic fiber optic cable service speed has reached 100Mbps, and the service provider said that it will eventually increase the number to 1Gbps to 10Gbps.