if you've connected your computer to a wired Network then you're probably using ethernet ethernet is the most popular networking standard in the world and almost any device you use will be able to connect to an Ethernet Network there are also many different types of ethernet they vary in speed the type of cabling we use the connectors at the end of these cables and the type of equipment that's required to connect all of these devices together our modern ethernet networks have many different standards for both Twisted paer copper cabling and for fiber optic connectivity the reason we're able to connect any device in the world to any ethernet Network and be able to have this connectivity is because there is a single set of standards for all of these ethernet networks those standards are created by the itle E 802.3 committee it is the Institute of electrical and electronics engineers and they're responsible for designing and documenting the standards we use to connect all of these ethernet networks together for example a very common ethernet Network would be 1,00 Bas T this is a gigabit Ethernet Network that operates over twisted pair copper cabling and operates at a speed of 1 gbit per second a newer version of that standard is the 10gbase T or the 10 gbit ethernet Network this also uses twisted pair copper cabling and operates at a speed of 10 GB bits per second there are also ethernet networks that use fiber optics an example of that would be 1000 Bas SX which is a gigabit Ethernet Network that uses fiber optics and operates at a speed of 1 gbit per second this is just a sample of a few of the more popular ethernet standards but there are many ethernet standards to choose from using different types of media and supporting different speeds the it has told us that the names they use for these standards don't necessarily correlate back to the details of the standard but there is usually some information that we can discern from the name itself for example if we look at a standard such as 1,00 base T we should be able to break that term apart and determine what type of media and technology is used as part of that standard for example the number that's used in the name of the standard is often related to the speed of the standard itself for example the 1,000 Bas T that 1,000 refers to the 1 ,000 megabits per second or 1 gigabit per second overall speed if this standard started with 10g then it would be related to a 10 gabit per second Network we often see the term base in the name of the standard and that's referring to the term baseband which means there is a single frequency that is used to be able to send this data over the network this is in contrast to something like Broadband which uses many different frequencies to be able to communicate across that Network networ and very often you can determine what type of media is associated with that standard by looking at the additional letters at the end of the standard for example 1,00 base T has a t at the end and we can assume that that t means that this is twisted pair copper if there was an F at the end it's very possible that this particular standard would use fiber optics there may be additional letters at the end of the standard for example if there is an SX at the end of the standard it might be referring to a short wavelength light that is sent over that fiber optic connection as mentioned previously the i e tries to put the name and terms within the standard so that it would be recognizable but that is not a requirement for the name of the standard itself if you were interested in the details of what that standard supports you would need to read the entire standard and not just look at the name of the standard