Know more about Cat5 and Cat6 cables

Cat5 and Cat6 cables

Cat5 and Cat6 are actually the optical fibre cables which are used to linked different systems to form a network. Various hosting companies, large internet providers, routers and switches all are connected to each other in order to exchange information in the form of data. It is through cat5 and cat6 cables that are used most commonly and widely to carry data from one station to another. The popularity of both these cables is such that it is very easy to find cat6 cable installation in NYC and cat5 cable installation in NYC. But before we go with its characteristics, functional features and benefits first let’s get a brief introduction to it.

What are cat5 cables?

It is a network cable made up of four twisted pairs of copper wires. Generally, it is terminated by RJ-45 connector and is commonly known as LAN cable. Also referred to as Ethernet cable it can be used barely up to the maximum length of 100m only after which it requires some sort of connector or network device for proper functioning. The common application of this cable can be found in structuring the cabling of computer networks and in carrying the signals of telephony and videos.

What are the cat6 cables?

Also referred to as Category 6 cable, this is also a standardized twisted pair of copper cable used in ethernet. Unlike cat5, cat5e and cat3 cable, these cables have total backward compatibility with its all previous versions. Generally used to set up cabling infrastructure gigabit(Gb) Ethernet-based computer networks, cat6 is actually the 6^th generation of twisted cabling wires. Although it supports 10 Gigabit ethernet connections but it can be used maximum to a length of 328 feet only. After this, it requires connectors or needs the aid of a bridge to perform efficiently.

Because cat6 cables are the next generation of cat5 cables thus they definitely have to be more durable and reliable. But besides this, there are many more other factors too which differentiate both of these categories. For instance:

•  Cat6 cables have a high speed of data transfer as compared to Cat5 cables.
•  Because Cat6 cables have improved shielding and better-twisted pair design thus they have reduced the impact of crosstalk.
• Even the speed of Cat6 cables are better than that of Cat5 cables.
• Cat6 cables also have a higher signal-to-noise ratio
• Although Cat6 cables are priced slightly higher than the Cat5 cables but then it's worth it because of their better connection speeds and overall performance.

While comparing the technical specifications of these two, obviously Cat6 is better than the Cat5 cables but as it is always said everything has its own importance. And one size cannot fit all. Even today, for all kind of residential networking purpose Cat5 cables, are preferred more. But being a commercial user who has a high need of transferring big data files quickly, has a lot of video/audio editing to do, need to work on the processing of networked machines then Cat6 cables are important to choose. 

So, what you choose depends only on what you want to avail.

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