Tech 101: What is an Ethernet Cable? - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats.
Hi, I am Mindy Liepitz and I am The Computer Lady from Grand Junction, Colorado. This is an ethernet cable. This is a very short ethernet cable. This is a very long ethernet cable. They come in an assortment of colors. They are generally six feet long and this is the cable that connects your computer to your high speed internet. I say that it looks alot like a pregnant phone cord. It has the same shape and same plug as a phone cable would, only a phone cable has four wires and this has eight, so it is much wider. They are called CAT 5 cables or ethernet cables and sometimes the words CAT 5 will be printed on the cable itself.
The ethernet cable plugs in on the back generally of a desktop computer and sometimes it is part of the original computer pieces or the motherboard, what we call onboard and it would be this hole right here and you would just take the cable and plug it in. Sometimes there is a light that flashes when it is connected. Sometimes the ethernet connection is added later to the computer in the form of a card that is plugged into the computer. And then it would be more toward the bottom here. This computer actually has two ethernet connections, an onboard connection and an added on connection.
Here again, all you would do is unplug the cord and plug it in like that. You push down on the little release to pull them out. Like that. If you have a laptop and you want to attach an ethernet cable to make it a wired internet connection, you would look on the side generally either left or right side of the laptop and again you see it here. And if you just remember that it is a pregnant phone connection. It looks just like a phone connection only much wider.
