A: EIA/TIA 568 and ISO/IEC 11801 wiring grades:
Grade 1 - Unshielded Untwisted wiring. Commonly called inside wire by the Telco community. (Informal designation)
Grade 2 - Unshielded twisted pair (UTP) derived from IBM Type 3 spec. (Informal designation)
Category 3 - Unshielded twisted pair with 100 ohm impedance and electrical characteristics supporting transmission at frequencies up to 16 MHz. May be used with 10Base-T, 100Base-T4, and 100Base-T2 Ethernet. (Obsolete)
Category 4 - Unshielded twisted pair with 100 ohm impedance and electrical characteristics supporting transmission at frequencies up to 20 MHz. May be used with 10Base-T, 100Base-T4, and 100Base-T2 Ethernet. (Obsolete)
Category 5 - Unshielded twisted pair with 100 ohm impedance and electrical characteristics supporting transmission at frequencies up to 100 MHz. May be used with 10Base-T, 100Base-T4, 100Base-T2, and 100Base-TX Ethernet. May support 1000Base-T, but cable should be tested. (Superceded by Cat5e)
Category 5e - "Enhanced Cat 5" exceeds Cat 5 performance. Very similar to Cat 5, it has improved specifications for NEXT (Near End Cross Talk), PSELFEXT (Power Sum Equal Level Far End Cross Talk), and Attenuation. May be used for 10Base-T, 100Base-T4, 100Base-T2, 100BaseTX and 1000Base-T Ethernet. (Minimum acceptable wiring grade)
Category 6 - In June 2002 TIA approved specification for Cat 6 doubling Cat 5 bandwidth to 250 MHz. Cat 6 is backward compatible with lower Category grades and supports the same Ethernet standards as Cat 5e. A Cat 6 whitepaper is available from TIA.
Currently there are no Ethernet standards that take advantage of Cat 6. ANSI/TIA854 is working on 1000Base-TX. When complete this standard will use two pair in each direction as opposed to all four for 1000Base-T over Cat 5e. This is expected to reduce the cost of Gigabit Ethernet implementations. 1000Base-TX will only operate over Cat6.
Category 7 - Proposed standard to support transmission at frequencies up to 600 MHz over 100 ohm twisted pair.
NOTES:
1) EIA 568 limits UTP copper cabling to maximum distance of 100 meters (328 feet). 90 meters of cable plus 10 meters of patch cord split between both ends.
2) The FCC recently changed the requirement for telephone inside wiring to minimum of Cat 3 due to crosstalk problems with nontwisted quad-four. Cat 3 is no longer recognized by TIA. The minimum wiring grade for structured wiring is Cat 5e.
3) For installation to meet specific Category requirements all components must meet or exceed the designated Category. Using a Cat 3 receptacle (or patch cord) on Cat 6 reduces performance to Cat 3.
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by tschmidt  edited by graffixx
last modified: 2005-05-23 12:19:25 |
