UTP vs STP

Twisted pair

Twisted pair cabling is a form of wiring in which two conductors (the forward and return conductors of a single circuit) are twisted together for the purposes of canceling out electromagnetic interference (EMI) from external sources; for instance, electromagnetic radiation from Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cables, and crosstalk between neighboring pairs

A)Unshielded Twisted Pair

Twisted pair cables were first used in telephone systems by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881. By 1900, the entire American telephone line network was either twisted pair or open wire with similar arrangements to guard against interference. Today, most of the millions of kilometres of twisted pairs in the world are outdoor landlines, owned by telephone companies, used for voice service, and only handled or even seen by telephone workers.

UTP cables are found in many ethernet networks and telephone systems. For indoor telephone applications, UTP is often grouped into sets of 25 pairs according to a standard 25-pair color code originally developed by AT&T. A typical subset of these colors (white/blue, blue/white, white/orange, orange/white) shows up in most UTP cables.

For urban outdoor telephone cables containing hundreds or thousands of pairs, the cable is divided into smaller but identical bundles. Each bundle consists of twisted pairs that have different twist rates. The bundles are in turn twisted together to make up the cable. Pairs having the same twist rate within the cable can still experience some degree of crosstalk. Wire pairs are selected carefully to minimize crosstalk within a large cable.

Short for Unshielded Twisted Pair cable, UTP cable is a popular type of cable used in computer networking that consists of two shielded wires twisted around each other.

B)Shielded Twisted Pair

Shielded Twisted Pair Cable is used to eliminate inductive and capacitive coupling. Twisting cancels out inductive coupling, while the shield eliminates capacitive coupling. Most applications for this cable are between equipment, racks and buildings. Shielding adds usually some attenuation to the cable (compared to unshielded), but usually not because in the case of balanced transmission, the complementing signals will effectively cancel out any shield currents, so shield current losses are negligible.

The noise pickup characteritics of twisted pair cable is determined by the following cable characteristics: number of twists per meter (generally more twists per meter gives better performance), uniform cable construction, capacitance balance (less capacitance difference to groud, the better), cable diameter (less are between wires is better) and the amount of shielding (more shielding, the better).