A generic FC term used to cover all transmission media types specified in the Fibre Channel Physical Layer standard (FC-PH), such as optical fiber, copper twisted pair, and copper coaxial cable.

A cabling medium with a glass core, plastic insulation and a protective plastic outer layer. Able to transmit light at near the speed of light.

a thin filament of glass / optical waveguide consisting of a core and a cladding which is capable of carrying information in the form of light

A serial data transfer architecture developed by a consortium of computer and mass storage device manufacturers and now being standardized by ANSI. The most prominent Fibre Channel standard is Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL). FC-AL was designed for new mass storage devices and other peripheral devices that require very high bandwidth. Using optical fiber to connect devices, FC-AL supports full-duplex data transfer rates of 100MBps. FC-AL is compatible with, and is expected to eventually replace, SCSI for high-performance storage systems.

Fibre-optic cabling, used for high-bandwidth connections over longer distance than ethernet allows.

A short tube used to make solder-less connections to shielded or coaxial cable. In fibre optics, a tube with a central hole that holds the fibre in a connector.

A way of transmitting data or voice signals that uses glass or plastic fibres rather than copper wire. The signal is generated by pulses from a laser or light emitting diode. Fibre-optic cable has a much greater bandwidth than copper.

(Also known as "fibre channel.") A device (in the case of RAID, a data storage device) protocol capable of high data transfer rates. Fibre channel simplifies data bus sharing and supports not only greater speed, but also more devices on the same bus. Fibre channel can be used over both copper wire and optical cable. An optical network data transmission cable type which is unrelated to fibre channel (above).