maximum coax bandwidth ?

[bsr]

This is more of a curious question then anything, What is the max bandwidth for coax ? And what is the maximum bandwidth that a cable company can handle (total) ??

 

[JackMDS]

Coax Cables are rated by impedance (Resistance at a given frequency), and max. Frequency that they can carry through.

The following link will show you a table of Coax performance.

<a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http:// http://www.cablexperts.com/cfdocs/tech_data.cfm#attenuation"> Attenuation & Power Rating Coax Chart
Nominal Attenuation & Average Input Power in Watts at Frequencies (MHz)</a>

And here there is a Calculator:

Coax Cable Calculator & Guide

The Coax Cable plays a roll in the Capacity of providing Bandwidth. However the capacity to ?push? more Bandwidth is a much more complicated issue involving other components as well.

In any case, most central installations moved or are moving to Fiber optics.

 

[ScottMac]

It's going to vary with the type of coax.

A high-end flavor of rg/6 quad-shield is swept up to 2.2 GHz (it'll carry higher freqs, but at a higher loss).

"HardLine" such as is used by the cable companies for distribution (much of the hardline is migrating to fiber) can go well into the tens of Ghz. Hardline is essentially coax with a solid copper (or aluminum) shield (looks like corrugated copper/aluminum pipe). Check out "heliax" at www.andrew.com. Something like LDF4-75 1/2" heliax.

Once you hit certain frequencies, regular cable becomes impractical (again, it'd work, but with very high losses), and you start to see the use of "waveguide" ... which looks like coax (anywhere from 1/4" up to a foot or so in diameter) with no guts ......basically a hollow tube.

So, as is often the case, the absolute answer is "it depends."

FWIW

Scott