Cat 3 Cable Speed

Category 3 cable commonly known as cat 3 or station wire and less commonly known as vg or voice grade as for example in 100basevg is an unshielded twisted pair utp cable used in telephone wiring.

Cat 3 cable speed.

The category 6 augmented cable standard or cat 6a was created to further improve the performance of cat 6 ethernet cables using cat 6a enables 10 gigabit ethernet data rates over a single cable run up to 328 feet. Finally category 8 is the new spec on the cable block. The category 3 or cat3 standard was used heavily in the early 90 s for wiring offices and homes. It was popular for use with 10 mbps ethernet networks 100base t but has now been superseded by cat 5 cable.

The new 2ghz speed limit. Cable twisting length is not standardized but typically there are 1 5 2 twists per cm in cat 5 e and 2 twists per cm in cat 6. Techopedia explains category 3 cable cat 3 cable conceived in 1990 the cat 3 cable was one of the most popular data communication cables until 2000. Cat 6a the a in cat 6a stands for augmented.

It s still used in two line phone configurations but has largely fallen out of favor for wired networking thanks to the category 5e cable s superior performance. Cat 6 supports 10 gigabit ethernet only up to 164 feet of cable length. This cable is defined in tia eia 568 b. It is part of a family of standards defined jointly by the electronic industries alliance eia and the telecommunications industry association tia and published in tia eia 568 b.

That speed comes with a price however as cat 6 cables are more expensive than cat 5 and cat 5e variants. It is used in 10base t and token ring networks from which it has the ability to transmit data at a speed of 10 mbps. Cat 3 cable was introduced in the early 1990s and was a popular standard for use in early local area networks or lans. Cat3 can be relied on to handle data speeds of up to 10 mbps but no more.

The cat 5 cable replaced the cat 3 standard for ethernet usage in the mid 90s due to its abilities to transmit much higher data speeds. This cable is not recognised by the tia eia. There are two main physical differences between cat 5 and cat 6 cables the number of twists per cm in the wire and sheath thickness. It is used for data networks employing frequencies up to 16 mhz.