Shielded twisted pair
termnetworking
Stands for: Shielded twisted pair (F/UTP, S/FTP and related constructions)
Twisted-pair cabling with foil or braid shielding - for the environments where twist geometry alone can't fight the noise.
The shielded family is named by construction: F/UTP wraps an overall foil around unshielded pairs, S/FTP adds a braid over individually foiled pairs, and older 'STP' loosely covered several of these. Shields must be properly grounded to help rather than hurt. It costs more and bends less than UTP, so it earns its place mostly in industrial floors, high-EMI areas, and Cat 8 / high-frequency links where the standard effectively demands shielding.
Also known as: shielded twisted pair, f/utp, s/ftp, sftp cable, screened cable