Understanding Ethernet Cables- Cat 5e and Cat 6

Jan. 5, 2012 - PRLog -- To get an idea of what each category cable does, lets take a closer look at each of these cables. The first one -Category 5 became a standard in 1995-  and appeared in: ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-A, EN 50173, ISO 11801. But with the introduction of the gigabit Ethernet in 1998 (1000BASE-T), the original Cat5 specification could not guarantee an error-free performance. That is when Cat 5e appeared on the scene as it had extra technical requirements added to the original Cat5 specification. These specifications included - Return Loss, Delay, Delay Skew and Power Sum Crosstalk measurements, while the 100MHz channel remained, it had a tighter electrical specification.

The standards of the cable were updated in 1999/2000 and in September 2002, the standards were replaced by ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-B, EN 50173 2nd Edition, ISO 11801 2nd Edition.

Further evolution then took place and in mid 2002 Category 6/Class E was introduced. It had the following standards: ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-B2-1 EN 50173 2nd Edition, ISO 11801 2nd Edition. Cat6 has a higher bandwidth and data rates of up to 10 Gb/s can be offered to LANs, and superior video transmission performance is also possible.
Here is a comparison and few details on the Cat-5e and Cat-6 cabling systems:

Cat-6 is a top-of-the-line UTP (unshielded twisted pair) cabling system. It is best suited for very fast computer networks. When it comes to residential usage, the Cat-5e cable is the most common choice. It is more than adequate for your home’s wiring. Cat-5e cables have four pairs of wire (eight total conductors) wrapped in a single jacket. The termination of the Cat-5e cables is done in connectors called as RJ-45 jacks. These connectors will seem very similar to you as they look exactly like common RJ-11 phone jacks, just that these are wider.

Cat-5e is a type of UTP copper cabling that is suitable for usage in phones, computer networks,and home theater and other audio/video systems. You can also use Cat-5e cabling to connect the A/V source components in your home theater to other rooms in the house. With Cat-5e cabling you can connect your home theater to your computer LAN and through this LAN to the Internet.

Cat 6 cable is designed to support ten gigabit Ethernet standard 10GBASE-T. It can offer speeds of 500 MHz. These specifications of the cable make it an ideal data centre technology for data centre standards- TIA 942 and EN 50173-5. In other words, Cat 6 is the ideal solution for computer rooms.

To wrap it up, it can be said that your cable selection will be hugely dependent on your Ethernet network. For a 10GBASE-T Ethernet network, then CAT6a cables are the best suited for the job. And in the case that your Ethernet is 100BASE-T or 100BASE-TX, CAT5e cables will suffice for the job. You can choose either of Cat 5e or Cat 6 if you’re on a 1000BASE-T network. While making the choice keep issues like layout of your equipment as well as your office plan layout. These decisions are best left to the professionals, and you must consider hiring one of the trusted Structured Data Cabling Engineers(http://www.cat5cablingjobs.co.uk/2008/07/low-cost-cat5e-d...) in your neighbourhood.

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The writer is Mike Belletty, from Cat 5 Cabling jobs. He is one of London's leading Structured Data Cabling Engineers (http://www.cat5cablingjobs.co.uk).