Category 5 Cables

Category 5 cable, commonly known as Cat 5, is an unshielded twisted pair type cable designed for high signal integrity. The actual standard defines specific electrical properties of the wire, but it is most commonly known as being rated for its Ethernet capability of 100 Mbit/s. Its specific standard designation is EIA/TIA-568.

Cat 5 cable typically has three twists per inch of each twisted pair of 24 gauge copper wires within the cable. Another important characteristic is that the wires are insulated with a plastic (FEP) that has low dispersion, that is, the dielectric constant of the plastic does not depend greatly on frequency. Special attention also has to be paid to minimizing impedance mismatches at connection points.

It is often used in structured cabling for computer networks such as fast Ethernet, although it is often used to carry many other signals such as basic voice services, token ring, and ATM (at up to 155 Mbits/s, over short distances).

The other well known flavor of this type of cable is the 10 Mbit/s Category 3 cable. Less well known is the 20 Mbit/s Cat 4. Cat 4 offered only a small advance in speed over Cat3, and was generally ignored in favour of Cat 5. Cat 1 and Cat 2 are 1 Mbit/s systems for voice and low-speed data.

Patch leads created from Cat 5 are often terminated with RJ-45 electrical connectors. Normal Cat 5 cables are wired "straight through" and connect a computer to a hub. In other words, pin 1 is connected to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2, etc. The RJ-45 pinout for a Cat 5 cable can either be TIA-568A or TIA-568B. TIA-568A is used by some phone systems and Token Ring. Most everything else, such as the Ethernet standards 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX, use TIA-568B.

In Ethernet, "crossover" Cat-5 cables are used to connect two hubs together, in which pairs two and three are reversed. Crossover cables can also be used to connect two PC's NICs directly (with no intervening hub).

Component Video Cables  |  Patch Cables  |  CAT5e Faceplates  |  CAT5e Jacks  |  RJ45  |  RJ12  |  Panduit  |  ICC
CAT5e Patch Cable  |  Toslink Connectors  |  Adapters  |  BNC  |  TNC  |  UHF  |  SMA  |  RCA  |  Audio Cables
Serial Cables  |  S Video Cables  |  USB  |  Firewire  |  Switch Boxes  |  Punchdown Tools  |  Stripping Tools  |  Racks
Cabinets  |  HDMI  |  DVI-D Cables  |  DVI  |  Satellite Splitters  |  Relay Racks  |  KVM Cables  |  Monitor Cables
VGA Cables |  Cable Tutorials  |  BNC Connector Tutorial  |  CAT5e Tutorial  |  Component Video Tutorial
DIN Connectors Tutorial  |  Video Cable Tutorial  |  Blog Archive

Year in Review and PAL Adapters       1/5/2009 9:30:04 AM

Use your VGA monitor cables and network cables to check out this beautiful video of 2008.