choosing media based on..

[xtox]

I'm just having a little struggle coming to terms with the following statements..

Choosing media based on contention and choosing media based on bandwidth.

This is for a project where I have to justify the usage of a different mediums throughout a large scalable network and i'm not too sure what those statements mean.

If you can give me some insight, that would be great!

 

[Eulogy]

Well, contention would relate more to your connectivity device (hub, switch), IMO, than actualy media (if you limit media to being the cabling).
Contention being that on shared mediums, only one device can transmit at a time, or else a collision will occur.
Bandwidth is pretty easy to go with. For a very limited example, cat3 (10Mbps)versus cat5 (100Mbps).
Realize also, bandwidth != throughput