CHAPTER 3PHYSICAL LAYER

The physical layer (also called layer 1) is the physical connection between the computers and/or devices in the network. This chapter examines how the physical layer operates. It describes the most commonly used media for network circuits and explains the basic technical concepts of how data are actually transmitted through the media. Three different types of transmission are described: digital transmission of digital computer data, analog transmission of digital computer data, and digital transmission of analog voice data. You do not need an engineering-level understanding of the topics to be an effective user and manager of data communication applications. It is important, however, that you understand the basic concepts, so this chapter is somewhat technical.

Get Business Data Communications and Networking, 13th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.