There are many... The two major ones are Fiber and Ethernet. You also have coax and tolkenring which are two older technologies. Those are LAN media connections as for WAN's there are DS3's T1's Fiber... and more.

Local Area Networks (LAN) is a private network or with in a single building. For transmitting data over Local Area Network (LAN) single cable is used and all Computers are attached by single cable. Local Area Network (LAN) mostly comes into two categories. These categories are cable network and wireless network. Cable network consists of three types of cables twisted pair cable, coaxial cable and fiber optics. Twisted pair cable consists of pairs of copper wire twisted together. 4 to 300 twisted pairs are bundled in a group. In Local Area Network (LAN) 25 pairs is a standard. The standard used in industry is known as 10 bas T, which tracks information transmission at 10 Megabits per seconds. There are two types of twisted pair cable; shielded twisted pair and unshielded twisted pair cable. Coaxial cable consists of single central wire that is surrounded by insulation. This cable is similar to television cable. Mostly it is used to connect computer placed 100 meters distance from each other. fiber optics is the latest. Fiber optics consists of hundreds of twisted pair of copper wire. Fiber optics has so many advantages over other two types. The only drawback of fiber optics is that it is costly.

My answer would be: Wire (coax or UTP), wireless (802.x), and fiber. For a classic network. There are a half-dozen other ways to "network" your machines including serial RS-232/RS-422, USB, firewire, even bidirectional printer ports, but these are not as versatile as true "network" technology.

Ethernet is the most commonly used and is faster then wireless, there is also fiber if u can afford it.

No one uses coax anymore really, well cable modems but in networking typically copper or fiber. Cat5 or Cat 6 cable terminated with RJ-45 is most common to the desktop and Single mode fiber is most common between switches terminated with either SC, LC ST or MTRJ. LC is a more recent termination probably becoming a more common connection now a days. -s

CX-11230, RS-232, RJ-11, RJ-45 CAT5, CAT5e, CAT6, TFOCA-II

LAYER ONE ⇔ Media layer • twisted pair found Category 5 5e 6 etc cabling • twisted pair as found in TELCO t-1 ⇔ t 30 • optical fiber as found in OC standards. • microwave links to terrestrial and comm satellites • Packet radio for many diverse applications • including cell phone and GPS • STP shielded TP for high noise (emf) environments • acoustical point to point links such as sonar • power-line used in a single building Whatever the ultra-black the military can come up with.

there are three different medias(major) that are being used on networking... 1.) COPPER 2.) FIBER 3.) WIRELESS