I’ll say up front that I’ve had less experience with these, but hopefully it’ll be somewhat useful. I’ll address Wireless up front, as all the rest are some type of wired media.
Wireless/WiFi
This is WiFi/Wireless that’s used by cell phones, tablets, and wifi-enabled laptops & desktops. It has the advantage of not requiring a wire (obviously), but it has a few downsides as well. In my experience, I always prefer wired if I can because of these downsides. First, walls and distance become a factor that can make wifi unreliable or unavailable. Also, the transmission speeds tend to be lower due to the signal being attenuated over distances & through obstacles. Also, it can technically be less secure as it’s easier for a less tech-savvy user to use an insecure connection method which allows their traffic to be intercepted. But obviously, the advantage of being mobile and able to use the device is much superior to the downsides in certain settings.
The rest of these are wired methods
Ethernet
This is the common “computer cable” you’re used to – Cat5, Cat6, “networking cable”, “weird phone cable”, etc. The Cat-* just indicates which generation the cable is. Higher numbers are later generation and are faster & more modern. Compatibility can be an issue, so don’t assume that buying a more recent cable will automatically make the connection faster, as the other network equipment may not support it.
Ethernet uses the RJ-45, which, when on the phone with non-tech savvy folks, I will summarize as “a wider phone connection, but too large to fit into a phone jack).
Ethernet is cheap and common, but there are length restrictions to it – you can’t run an ethernet cable hundreds of feet and expect a good connection (though I’ve had customers try that). After a few hundred feet, you’ll need SOMETHING to boost the signal – either a switch or a dedicated device.
For longer runs, we use:
Fiber
Fiberoptic cable uses one (or more; usually more) tiny, thin glass threads to send the signal along at near-light speed. While it can handle longer distances and is much faster than ethernet, it’s a lot more fragile (since the inside is glass threads instead of copper wires). So we either 1) use it in short runs to connect switches to each other, since that’s usually locked away in a network closet, or 2) run it through conduit longer distances to provide fast connections more remote locations.
Coax[ial] Cable
You’re probably used to seeing this as the Cable connection for the TVs. We don’t use it ourselves, but it is commonly used by ISPs to connect their cable run to their equipment, which we then bridge to our equipment either with Ethernet or Fiber. I see it as something of a tradeoff between Ethernet and Fiber – it has the long-range of Fiber and the sturdiness of Ethernet, with a price that’s probably in the middle (although I haven’t priced it out in a while). But it’s not as fast as Fiber, so, since we CAN get fiber and run it, we tend to use that for the backbone of our networks (connecting our switches to each other and eventually to the firewall/routers), as fiber doesn’t have as much issue with traffic congestion as cable does.
SFP Modules
Fortunately, most of our equipment comes with “SFP” module interfaces. This is a great feature on our equipment where it comes with an empty port. Into that port we plug an SFP (small form-factor pluggable) module which functions like a converter to ethernet, fiber, coax (and other) interfaces. So if we decide to swap what cable/wire we want to use, we can just replace the SFP module instead of the entire device. As indicated above, this is usually starting with an Ethernet SFP and then switching to a Fiber SFP when we need to handle more traffic.
Here’s some pics of SFP modules (shared with Creative Commons licenses)
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