Category 8 Cable Standards

The cable contains four twisted copper wire pairs just like the earlier standards.

Category 8 cable standards.

Cat 7 600 mhz 10 gbps. Category 5e cat5e cable also known as enhanced category 5 is designed to support full duplex fast ethernet operation and gigabit ethernet. Cat 7a 1000 mhz 10 gbps. Cat 5 5e 100 mhz 100 mbps.

Also aimed at data centers and requiring high speed gear the cables run at 1 or 2ghz and can move up. Cat 3 1 mhz 10 mbps. Cat 8 2000mhz 40gbps. Here are the current category standards for twisted pair cables.

Cat 6 250 mhz 1 gbps. Category 6 cable cat 6 is a standardized twisted pair cable for ethernet and other network physical layers that is backward compatible with the category 5 5e and category 3 cable standards. The cable standard specifies performance of up to 250 mhz compared to 100 mhz for cat 5 and cat 5e. The performance requirements have been raised slightly in the new standard see comparison chart below.

The general rule is that a higher number is a newer technology and can support higher data rates but that s just one of the main differences. Standard bandwidth measured in mhz. Cat 5e standard for cat 5 enhanced and it is a form of cat 5 cable manufactured to higher specifications although physically the same as cat 5. If you work in more powerful internet settings you might even be familiar with cat7.

The category 7 cable standard was ratified in 2002 to allow 10 gigabit ethernet over 100 m of copper cabling. The new 2ghz speed limit finally category 8 is the new spec on the cable block. Cat 5e can be used for 100base t and 1000base t gigabit ethernet. Category 8 cat8 cable or cat 8 cable is an ethernet cable which is a different type of cable standing apart from the previous cables.

It has a slightly higher frequency specification that cat 5 cable as the performance extends up to 125 mbps. It supports a frequency of up to 2ghz 2000 mhz. Cat 6 has to meet more stringent specifications for crosstalk and system noise than cat 5 and cat 5e. You ve seen the cat or category designations cat5e and cat6 and cat6a plenty.

The main differences between cat5 and cat5e can be found in the specifications. The category 8 standard was developed by the ansi tia 568 standards body more specifically the tr42 7 committee. It is limited up to the 30 meter 2 connector channel. As you can see by the category standards above you can expect cat 8 to provide better.

The document that details category 8 cabling is ansi tia 568 c 2 1 and was published in november 2016 as a standard therefore category 8 is no longer in a draft format.