Glossary

C

Category 5
Twisted-pair cable with electrical characteristics suitable for all twisted-pair Ethernet media systems, including 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX. Category 5 and Category 5e cable are preferred cable types for structural cabling systems.

Category 5e
An enhanced version of Category 5 cable, developed to improve certain cable characteristics important to Gigabit Ethernet operation. It is recommended that all new structured cabling systems be based on Category 5e cable; however, this cable may not be the best for use in industrial installations because of noise susceptibility.

Collision
The result of having two or more simultaneous transmissions on a common signal channel such as half-duplex Ethernet or shared Ethernet.

Collision Domain
The set of all stations connected to a network where faithful detection of a collision can occur. A collision domain terminates at a switch port.

CRC
Cyclic Redundancy Check. An error-checking technique used to ensure the fidelity of received data.

Crossover Cable
A twisted-pair patch cable wired in such a way as to route the transmit signals from one piece of equipment to the receive port of another piece of equipment, and vice versa. This allows communication between two peer devices. The opposite of a crossover cable is the straight-through cable.

CSMA/CD
Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detect. The medium access control (MAC) Protocol used in Ethernet.