A cat6 cable is similar to a cat5 ethernet cable it consists of four pairs of twisted copper wire.
Cat 6 ethernet cable speed.
It s theoretical top speed is 10 gbps over 100 meters.
A cat6 cable has a bandwidth capacity of 250 mhz for example and it offers you speeds of up to 10 gbps.
As a means of future proofing your network cat6 is generally a better choice and worth the small premium in price.
Ethernet cables are standardized into different categories.
Although the spline is not required in cat 5 cable some manufactures include it anyway.
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 cost is about 20 35 higher than cat6 but the maximum cable length is 100 meters across all systems and conditions for gigabit ethernet.
Many cat 6 cables also include a nylon spline which helps eliminate crosstalk.
Normally it supports a maximum transmission speed up to 1 gbps within 100m.
Cat 6a the a in cat 6a stands for augmented.
For example you ll see cables rated as category 5 category 5e category 6 category 7 and so on.
Each cable with a higher number is a newer standard.
It consists of four pairs of copper wire which supports up to 10 gbps of ethernet connection.
That speed comes with a price however as cat 6 cables are more expensive than cat 5 and cat 5e variants.
We usually shorten these names to cat 5 cat 5e cat 6 and so on.
Cat6 cables also called category 6 or cat 6 cables provide lower crosstalk a higher signal to noise ratio and are suitable for 10gbase t 10 gigabit ethernet while cat5e cables support only up to 1000base t gigabit ethernet.
Cat5e and cat6 cables are both backwards.
In the picture above the cat 5e cable is the only one with a spline.
However it provides you with much more functionality.
Cat6 cable is otherwise called category 6 ethernet cable.
While cat6 cable supports 37 55 meters depending on crosstalk when transmitting at a speed of 10 gbps.
And yes these cables are backwards compatible.
Cat 6 supports 10 gigabit ethernet only up to 164 feet of cable length.
The cable standard specifies performance of up to 250 mhz compared to 100 mhz for cat 5 and cat 5e.
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.