Comparing Cat 5e and Cat 6 Standards

Net­work tech­nolo­gies are con­stant­ly evolv­ing, try­ing to pro­vide more and more band­width. And telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment is also improv­ing. It would be strange if today’s ter­abit data vol­umes were trans­mit­ted over some kind of two-wire ADSL, would­n’t it? There­fore, it was replaced by Eth­er­net, and then fiber in gen­er­al.

Nev­er­the­less, it was Eth­er­net that became the gen­er­al­ly accept­ed stan­dard for lay­ing local net­works. It was made so by the cross-com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of equip­ment and the con­ve­nience of lay­ing lines. How­ev­er, with the increase in the amount of trans­mit­ted data, there was a need to increase the band­width of Eth­er­net.

This is how new cat­e­gories of Eth­er­net inter­face began to appear. The most com­mon in local net­works at the moment (2019) are Cat 5e and Cat 6. These stan­dards pro­vide suf­fi­cient per­for­mance for work­ing on a LAN and con­nect­ing com­put­ers, servers and oth­er telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment.

Nev­er­the­less, there is a dif­fer­ence between these stan­dards, and a very sig­nif­i­cant one. Let’s con­sid­er both.

Cat 5e standard

The Cat 5e Eth­er­net stan­dard is designed for use in low-load net­works, as it is focused on trans­mit­ting a sig­nal with a fre­quen­cy of 100 MHz. Its con­struc­tion includes a nylon thread that enhances strength, tear resis­tance and bend­ing resis­tance. How­ev­er, the jack­et (cam­bric) of the wire is rel­a­tive­ly thin, which makes it quite vul­ner­a­ble to inter­fer­ence.

But a thin shell great­ly sim­pli­fies the gas­ket. Such a wire bends bet­ter and there­fore can be used for instal­la­tion in dif­fi­cult con­di­tions.

Cables of this stan­dard are avail­able in three ver­sions — UTP, FTP and SFTP. The first are unshield­ed and there­fore suit­able for lay­ing net­works that do not require high pro­tec­tion of trans­mit­ted infor­ma­tion from inter­fer­ence. For exam­ple, for home or office use. But STP cables are already com­ple­ment­ed by a screen that pro­tects against inter­fer­ence. They are designed for high-pre­ci­sion trans­mis­sion of infor­ma­tion in spe­cial con­di­tions, as well as for lay­ing near sources of elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields (includ­ing elec­tric motors in refrig­er­a­tors and vac­u­um clean­ers).

SFTP is intend­ed for use near pow­er­ful sources of elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields — gen­er­a­tors, trans­form­ers, elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions. It shields both each twist­ed pair and all four pairs under the shell (cam­bric).

But the main thing is that the max­i­mum infor­ma­tion trans­fer rate over a cat­e­go­ry 5e inter­face is 1 giga­bit per sec­ond. PoE is sup­port­ed. The max­i­mum lay­ing length with­out ampli­fi­ca­tion or con­nec­tion to the “bridge” is 100 meters.

Cat 6 standard

The Cat 6 stan­dard is designed specif­i­cal­ly for use in high-load net­works. Its design includes high­ly woven twist­ed pairs with a large num­ber of turns per lin­ear cen­time­ter. Thanks to this, the cable can with­stand data trans­mis­sion at a fre­quen­cy of 250 MHz.

Increas­ing the fre­quen­cy of the trans­mit­ted sig­nal made it pos­si­ble to increase the band­width of the inter­face. Net­works based on it and relat­ed hard­ware sup­port 10 Giga­bit Eth­er­net.

Struc­tural­ly, the wire of the sixth cat­e­go­ry dif­fers from its pre­de­ces­sor in the increased thick­ness of the sheath. This helps to pro­tect the trans­mit­ted infor­ma­tion from exter­nal elec­tro­mag­net­ic inter­fer­ence and inter­fer­ence from oth­er cables, includ­ing pow­er ones.

“Sixth cat­e­go­ry” is also avail­able in shield­ed and unshield­ed ver­sions. An SFTP ver­sion with two screens for lay­ing near strong sources of elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields is also avail­able.

Cables of this type have one very impor­tant fea­ture — the max­i­mum trans­mit­ted fre­quen­cy depends on the length of the wire. That is, the above 250 MHz wire is capa­ble of trans­mit­ting only if the dis­tance from the trans­mit­ter to the receiv­er does not exceed 55 meters. And with an increase in its cable, it can only cope with 100 MHz.

As a result, the high­est band­width of 10 giga­bits per sec­ond is only achieved at a length of up to 55 meters. With a greater dis­tance between the receiv­er and the trans­mit­ter, it is only 1 giga­bit per sec­ond. And the max­i­mum length is 100 meters. PoE pow­er trans­mis­sion is also sup­port­ed.

Difference between Cat 5e and Cat 6

Let’s sum­ma­rize the infor­ma­tion about these two stan­dards in a com­par­a­tive table:

At the same time, it is worth not­ing that the max­i­mum through­put is indi­cat­ed as a rec­om­mend­ed, but not a lim­it. Accord­ing to the stud­ies, for short-term trans­mis­sion over short dis­tances (up to 30–40 meters), the 5e inter­face will cope with a 10-giga­bit load, and the “sixth cat­e­go­ry” will with­stand 500 MHz.