Telecommunication Media
I. Electric Cables:

A. Ethernet or 10BaseT or Cat5 or Cat6 cable Four pairs of copper wire and an RJ45 Jack Speed: Currently 10 Megabits per second. Can be boosted to 100 Megabits per second(100BaseT) called FAST Ethernet. Or, 1000 Megabits per second (1000BaseT) called Gigabit Ethernet.

B. ThinNet or 10Base2 cable Single Shielded cable with core of many wires. Speed: Currently 10-100 Megabits per second, may be faster in the future.

C. Cable-TV cable. Speed: Up to 10 Megabits per second (downstream) usually 2Mb/sec.
with a cable modem.

E. Thick Ethernet cable. Coaxial (double shielded) heavy duty cable.
Speed: 100 Megabits per second.

II. Fiber Optic Cable.  Glass or optical plastic fibers. Speed: 10-100 Gigabits per second per fiber in the lab, usually 100 Megabits to 1 Gigabit commercially.

III. Infrared beam. Speed: 10 Megabits per second.

IV. Radio Waves:

a. Microwaves using towers or satellites. Speed:  Up to 100 Megabits per channel.

b. 802.11 protocol also know as Wi-Fi. Speed: 20 Megabits per second on the 2.4 Gigahertz radio frequency.