The Ethernet IEEE 802.3 specification can run across fiber optic, coaxial, and UTP copper cabling.
To use coaxial cabling in a physical bus topology (which can be either 10Base2 or 10Base5), you must follow the 5-4-3 rule, which states that there can be five (5) cable segments connected with four (4) repeaters, but only three (3) of the segments can be populated with nodes.
10BaseT
10BaseT uses copper UTP cabling of Cat3 or better grade, connected to a central hub, to create a physical star topology.
The UTP cables in a 10BaseT network use a registered jack 45 (RJ-45) type of connector.
10BaseT runs at 10Mbps, and cables can be a maximum of 100 meters in length. This lenght includes the spans of the patch cable and drop cable.
100BaseTX
On the exterior, 100BaseTX looks the same as 10BaseT because 100BaseTX uses copper UTP cabling of Cat5 or better grade connected to a central hub. Cat5 has two pairs of copper wires within the cable.
All cables use an RJ-45 connector and have a maximum cable length of 100 meters.
100BaseTX provides speds of up to 100 Mbps.
10Base2
10Base2 uses a physical bus topology in which all computers connect to a maion cable, which is RG-58 coaxial cable, also called ThinNet.
The maximum length of the ThinNet coax cable is 185 meters.
A 10Base2 network allows only 30 computers per segment and provides a speed of 10 Mbps.
10Base5
10Base5 uses a physical bus topology in which all the computers connect to a main cable, and it requires RG-8 or RG-11 coaxial cable, which is known as ThickNet.
The maximum length of a 10Base5 segment is 500 meters, and it offers 10 Mbps.
100BaseFX
100BaseFX provides Ethernet over fiber optic cable at a 100-Mbps speed.
The maximum length of the fiber optic segment is 6,562 feet, or 2000 meters.
Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet uses Cat5 or better grade cabling in a physical star topology and requires RJ-45 connectors.
Gigabit Ethernet is also called 1000BaseT, and it offers 1 Gbps of speed.