You are designing a DAS that will support five buildings on a college campus. Which medium is best suited to ensure the best connectivity and throughput between the headend and backend devices…

Coaxial cable suffers significant signal attenuation over the longer inter-building distances of a campus environment and remains susceptible to ground loops between separate structures.

Optical fiber supports very high throughput over long distances without signal degradation from EMI or ground-loop issues that affect copper media, which is critical when linking a DAS headend to remote units across multiple campus buildings. It also provides electrical isolation between structures, preventing ground potential differences and lightning-induced damage that are common failure modes in multi-building copper installations.

Shielded twisted-pair cabling has a maximum run length of approximately 100 m for standard Ethernet, making it impractical for inter-building campus links without adding repeaters.

Unshielded twisted-pair cabling shares the 100 m distance limitation of STP and is more susceptible to EMI, making it the least suitable option for a campus-scale DAS backbone.