What are Cat5 and Cat6 cables meant for?

If you have been by any chance, stumbled upon the network installation unit in your office, you must have come across these two terms. So what are these cables and how do they affect your network? It’s just like accessing a high speed optical cable and low speed optical cables. The major fact about Cat6 is that this is a new technology and it has still not been utilized 100 percent effectively and it awaits its perfect utilization in the near future.

Which is better Cat5 or Cat6?

As we all know that there has been an increase in the use of bandwidth architecture since the last decade, the trend is bound to grow and there will be times when the Cat5 Ethernet cable won’t be able to provide the efficient output so as to sustain the demand for push in the network and it will lead to a higher interference or collisions in the transmission.

Though in present scenario the Cat5 cable will be working as perfectly as required, but might be a waste n the coming times. Say for example a company which works at a rate of 10-100 MB of data per second is well suited to run a Cat5 cable as its transmission channel. But what if the company expands and there comes a time when it will need to transact 1000 MB of data as its streaming pattern. The Cat5 cable won’t be able to bear it up and will lead to abnormal interference. So for any new give situation it is advisable to work with Cat6 cable but only if are planning to appease your company for much longer times.

Home Network

The most commonly confused thing about it is that if you are ready to work with Cat6 get yourself a Cat6 cable or else Cat5 will work well enough for you. Complete support up to 100mbps is available with it so it’s a common guess that you won’t need any more than it for your Home connection.

Office Network

Putting in simple words if you want you company to complete work early and you do have a very lightning fast connection with gigabyte support then Cat6 cable suits you best but if your office is in no need of bulk data transaction and network connections implemented will be utilized in an average manner the best option would be to go for Cat5 cable. It will be a cost effective solution for you under such circumstances. But do remember, if the want for high speed connection increase in the long run, you won’t be able to cope it up with Cat5 cables. At that time you might have to rewire every network setup to Cat6 Ethernet connection.

Long and Short Distance Reference

There in no minimum distance for the implementation of Cat5 or Cat6 cables. The installation is supposed to work for the minimum distance of 100 meters. But as per the book of manuals it states that there should be a minimum distance of 15 meters between two consolidated points. This is just so as to avoid the minimum worst case which effects the performance as per calculations.

Future Comparison

Every new generation of networking demands faster and more feasible technology and more efficient cable for better connectivity. Cat5 substituted its predecessors and became the cost effective, work efficient cable for this generation and similarly it will be replace by Cat6 completely in the coming days. So there is no question of comparison for the time being. In short simple words Cat6 is a future proof option as compared to Cat5 cable as of today.

Work Load and Capacity

There is a stretch of difference between the work loads, both these cables can sustain. Cat5 is designed to transmit 10-100 MB of data per second under standard test conditions whereas Cat6 can provide a support for 1000 MB of data per second. There is also a great deal of differences in the efficiency of these two. The Interference in Cat6 cables is very less as compared to Cat5 cable. Also in Cat5 the twisting is limited to number of turns for every meters but is very high in Cat6 cables so there is lesser number of distortions per twists generated in Cat5.

Verdict for comparison between Cat5 and Cat6

After complete analysis, it is obvious that if you want to future proof your installation and guard it against any permanent change for high speed data access then you should obviously go with the Cat6 installation. If you are not worried about the main changes that are going to effect your upcoming transactions you can always rely on Cat5 as your basic solution cable, being the cost effective solution in the present day scenario.