How do cable lines on telephone poles transmit and receive data along thousands of houses and not get interference?
In: Engineering
If you are referring to how over a hundred people can transmit data over a few wires without getting mixed up, here is the closest explanation i can muster.
Whenever you wish to send or receive data, whether it be streaming a video or downloading a file, your PC will communicate will make a request for the data. In the case of streaming a video, your device will send a request to the server holding that video. The server will then package that data by splitting it up, associating your device’s IP address (like a home address but for computers), and will pack the segments into things called packets. The packets are transmitted through the network on a wire or by radio waves in the form of binary. Devices called routers will take this packet, read the destination IP address associated to this packet and will route it accordingly. This means the wire is filled with little segments of addressed data traveling based on their destination address, much like physical mail or cars on a highway. You should not receive anybody else’s data as your IP address and/or default gateway (your router’s IP address) is always unique. But that’s my best explanation without getting into more complicated things like the OSI reference model, TCP/UDP protocols, and ports.
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