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What are the differences between Category 5 (CAT5) and Category 6 (CAT6) Cables?

April 26, 2017cables Cat5 cat6 category differences

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What are the differences between Category 5 (CAT5) and Category 6 (CAT6) Cables?

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CAT5 cable contains four twisted pairs of copper wire and supports voice and data transmission rates up to 100 Mbps. It is commonly used for Fast Ethernet installations. Although CAT5 cable contains four pairs of wire, Fast Ethernet only utilizes two of these pairs. A newer specification for CAT5 cable, referred to as CAT5 Enhanced (CAT5e) utilizes all four wire pairs. CAT5e improves the performance characteristics of the cable enabling it to support short-run Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps) networking. CAT5e is backward-compatible with regular CAT5.