There are two categories of Transmission media:

• Guided transmission media.
• Unguided transmission media.

Guided Transmission media: It is also known as connection-oriented transmission. It follows a path or direction. It uses wire for transmission. It is safe and secure. It is expensive. It suited for point-to-point networking. It passes electronic voltage or current. Eg: – Twisted pair cable, Co-axial Cable, Fibber optic cable.

Advantages of Guided transmission media:

1. It allows to specify the direction of data transmission flow and also specifies protocols for error control.
2. Using it we can send or receive all transmission packets in sequence.
3. It specifies a small size packet.
4. It can only transmit a packet address.

Disadvantages of Guided transmission media:

1. Once the connection is established, we can’t change its direction.
2. Connection-oriented protocol sometimes generates congestion.
3. It specifies acknowledge with each packet. So, it consumes extra memory space and works slowly.

Unguided transmission media: It is also known as connectionless transmission. It doesn’t follow a path or direction. It provides a signal in the air. It provides un-authorized transmission. It is less expensive. It provides a broadcast network. It uses electromagnetic wire. Eg: – Satellite, Lightwave, Microwave, etc.

Advantages of Unguided transmission:

1. It is fast.
2. It is cheap.
3. It performs transmission with various roots at a time.
4. It uses maximum efficiency.

Disadvantages of Unguided transmission media:

1. It is not reliable.
2. It allows for sharing a common physical IP address. So, it’s responsible for all connected clients.
3. It sends an acknowledgment for each client.

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