Wiring Standards and Procedures

Introduction

In designing a network design, one factor that we need to know is the hardware components that describe all the physical components of a network, such as the router, hub, cables, switch, NIC and other connectivity device. These device help us to control and extend the usable size of a growing network. Also, to allow greater number of computers to exist on the network.
Network hardware is a device or physical component that is used to connect computers in a network.

STAR TOPOLOGY

In star topology, every node on the network is connected through a central device, such as hub or switch. Star topologies are usually built with twisted-pair or fiber-optic cabling. Any single cable on a star network connects only two devices, so a cabling problem will affect two nodes at most.

Switch

Switch operate at the Data Link Layer of the OSI model. Switch increase network performance by reducing the number of packets transmitted to the rest of the network. The advantage of switch are it increase available network bandwidth, with switches, there is reduced workload on individual computers, it increase network performance, there are fewer frame collisions because switch create collision domains for each connection (a process called microsegmentation ), switches have an unlimited number of prots and connect directly to workstations.

RJ-45

The standard connectors used with shielded twisted-pair and unshielded twisted-pair cabling. "RJ" stand for registered jack.
Crossover cable is a twisted-pair patch cable in which the termination locations of the transmit and recieve wire on one end of the cable are reversed.
Straight-through cable is a twisted-pair patch cable in which the wire terminations in both connectors follow the same scheme.