CAT5 Vs CAT6 - Which Should We Use?

CAT5 vs CAT6 might not be your idea of themegabit Ethernet connections. It's typically rated
fight of the century, but it's at least an importantat a transmission capacity of one hundred
battle for your electronics dollars as you decidemegaherz.
what's best for setting up your computerThe newest, state-of-the-art category is CAT 6.
network. Let's examine all the technical issues thatIt has arisen as more and more businesses and
are at the crux of your decision of which one toorganizations are relying on fiber optic connections
buy.to the Internet. This requires higher
Twisted pair cable is the main means of stringingbandwidth--bandwidth provided by CAT6.
together computer networks for dataThe current standard is an interim one between
transmissions. In North America this twisted pairCAT5 and 6: It's known as CAT5e. This is simply
cable takes the form of Unshielded Twisted Pair,an enhanced CAT5 which is used for transmitting
and in Europe, it's Shielded Copper Twisted Pair.a Gigabit (or 1000 megabits per second) of data.
Of those two, Shielded Copper Twisted Pair is theIt has enhanced shielding and is made to finer
more expensive, however, it has fewertolerances. There is also a considerable reduction
interference issues than Unshielded Twisted Pair.in between-line interference and crosswalk. But
Typically these will have a standard Rj45none of these are quite to the level of
modulator on them.performance and clarity of CAT6.
There are two categories of these kinds ofAll of which brings us back to the CAT5 vs CAT6
cables: solid and stranded (in which a portion ofdebate. Which should you use? CAT6, like CAT5,
the copper conduits are comprised of strands ofis comprised of four pairs of copper wire. It's
wire which are braided together). The solid cable isdifferent, though, because of its longitudinal
known to have superior transmission properties. Itseparator that separate the wires. It isolates the
is, however, stiffer, and more difficult to get itfair pairs from each other. The result is a
into tight spaces. Stranded is also more affordableconsiderably reduced cross talk. This does
and easier to form into patch cables. Still, ithowever, increase the manufacturing cost ever
suffers performance degradation, much moreso slightly.
than the solid cable.Here's the bottom line, then, in the CAT5 vs
Within these categories we find sub-categories.CAT6 decision: If your organization or business
Indeed, when we speak of CAT5 or 6 or evenplans to go to ten gigabit Ethernet, then you'll
CAT3, we're using shorthand for Category 5,want to go with CAT6. It operates at as fast as
Category 6 and Category 3. A category 3 cable is50 Mhz, thus greatly improving your transmission
for standard telephone use; it's seldom used forspeeds And in today's heavy-bandwidth days,
computer networks.every gigabyte that you can transfer at faster
Today, most cables used for networkingspeeds helps. However, if that kind of
computers or other networked electronicsperformance is not yet needed and your
devices is Category 5, or CAT5. CAT5 has beencompany cannot afford to pay the extra 10%
the traditional standard for the majority ofpremium, you'll probably need to stick with the
communications uses; most legacy wiring is CAT5.CAT5 and CAT5e standards.
Category 5 is capable of both 10 megabit and 100