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I just came across this, "Twisted pair cable supports a maximum data rate of 1Mbps without conditioning and 10Mbps with conditioning." What exactly does conditioning mean.

EDIT: I came across it in my school text book, picture of the content

sawdust
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Nibin
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    Can you supply more context? There are many types of twisted pair cables for various use-cases and conditioning is a rather loose term that can mean many things that are context dependent. You can edit your question to add more information. – Tonny Apr 20 '21 at 13:51
  • I think you might be thinking of Mode conditioning. https://www.cablestogo.com/learning/library/data-center/mode-conditioning-fiber – John Apr 20 '21 at 13:51
  • @John That is fibre-optic cable specific. Nothing to do with twisted pair. In twisted pair conditioning usually means signal-conditioning, but that is a property of the signal, not of the cable itself. Hence more context is needed. – Tonny Apr 20 '21 at 13:53
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    Without any context "cable" is an electronics and wiring problem, not a problem with computer hardware or software. – Mokubai Apr 20 '21 at 14:15
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    I actually came across it in my school text book which has just a para on twisted pair cables. It spoke about twisted pair cables in general. Didn't mention any specific type of cable. – Nibin Apr 20 '21 at 14:38
  • hm. Most modern cables happily do gigabit and have 4 not 2 pairs. I suspect the textbook is... kinda useless in real world contexts, and you should probably troll your teacher by asking them what it means... – Journeyman Geek Apr 20 '21 at 14:56
  • Lots of textbooks use unqualified phrases like this as if they have specific meaning when they don't. There are lots of types of signal conditioning and depend entirely on what the end result required is. As mentioned by Journey we use twisted pair for many fast signals (such as USB3). Signal termination, filtering and DC blocking are "conditioning" methods used in electronics, but their relevance to computing is far, *far*, **far** down in the electronic weeds away from what you would class as "computer hardware". If anything this is more of a question for [electronics.se] than here IMO. – Mokubai Apr 20 '21 at 15:45
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    Usually means adding something like a 6dB transmission pre-emphasis using line drivers and receiver de-emphasis which allows faster transmission due to improve slew or longer transmission distances. – Antony Apr 20 '21 at 15:46
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    *"Conditioning"* twisted pair cable is ***telecom*** terminology that involves inspecting for and removing extraneous connections (such as bridge taps & load coils) that degrade the signal (especially for [***T1 service***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-carrier#Transmission_System_1)). The modern tool to use would be a [time domain reflectometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-domain_reflectometer#Usage). Voice service can tolerate such connections, whereas traditional T1 cannot. HDSL (and its variants which replaces traditional T1) also does not require line conditioning. – sawdust Apr 21 '21 at 00:25

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