It is an information explosion era now, in daily life and work everywhere needs a network. And network cable is the most common one of the information transmission mediums. It is usually used in combination with the RJ45 crystal head and is widely applied in the Local Area Network.
Network cable is also known as the network jumper and twisted pair, including CAT5 (Category 5) cable, CAT5E (Category 5 enhanced) cable, CAT6 (Category 6) cable, CAT6A (Category 5 Augmented) cable and CAT7 (Category 7). This is shown in the following table.
Category | Data rate | Network | Frequency | Shielded |
CAT5 | 100Mbps | 100M | 150MHz | Yes/No |
CAT5E | 250Mbps | 100M / GbE | 150MHz | Yes/No |
CAT6 | 1Gbps | GbE | 250MHz | Yes/No |
CAT6A | 10Gbps | GbE / 10G | 500MHz | Yes/No |
CAT7 | 10Gbps | 10G | 600MHz | Yes |
As can be seen from the above table, both CAT5E and CAT6 cables are applied to gigabit Ethernet with a transmission distance of 100m. The Anti-interference ability of the CAT6 cable is stronger, and the return loss and insertion loss are lower. At present, the most commonly used non-shielded CAT6 network cable and CAT6A network cable is the best choice of the home network.