High Speed Copper Cabling Cat.6, Cat.6A, Cat.7A, Cat.8 Which one to choose?

Ethernet might very well be the most important technology employed nowadays in Local Area Networks (LANs). Since its very inception in 1983, the Ethernet family of standards has been updated time and time again to support higher bit rates, longer distances and a greater number of nodes. And as demand for higher speeds is not expected to cease, new standards will undoubtedly be developed accordingly.

It is no secret that the most common medium for transmitting data in local networks, especially in what we call horizontal cabling, is the copper or twisted pair (TP) cable. But although the latest Ethernet standards reach speeds of up to 400Gbps, copper wires have limitations of their own. 40Gbps is the fastest we can expect to transmit data over a TP cable; beyond that, we will have to resort to fiber optic cabling systems.

As its own name indicates, TP cables transmit data using 4 twisted pairs of copper wires, making a total of 8 wires. The higher the twisting rate, the better the transmission, and the wider the bandwidth too. And that is where all these different categories appear. So the real question is: how do we choose the cabling system that best suits our needs? And the answer is quite simple: we do it based on the applications we need to run.

Take, for instance, an Enterprise environment. Typical applications include internet connections, IPTV, IP Telephony and high density Wi-Fi systems. The interfaces required will range from 100Mbps to 1Gbps. Two possibilities come to mind: Cat.5e and Cat.6; after all, they both support Gigabit Ethernet. The difference is Cat.6 works with frequencies of up to 250MHz, which considerably improves the network performance. So Cat.6 turns out to be the most cost-effective choice.

But when you think of the Healthcare segment, things change. The size of medical images can be as large as a few gigabytes. And it is vital that they are transmitted in as little time as possible: the network has a direct impact on time to diagnosis. Cat.6 characteristics are not enough, and we find ourselves in need of a channel that supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Cat.6A will now be our cable of
choice.

Another standard available in the market is Cat.7A. It was designed for the same applications as Cat.6A, but the truth is it comes with a great number of disadvantages that make us discourage its use. On one hand, its diameter is larger than that of a Cat.6A cable, meaning it takes up more space in cable trays. On the other, and unlike Cat.5e, Cat.6 and Cat.6A, it doesn’t use RJ-45 connectors. The thing is, RJ-45 has become the standard connector for all network devices. If you take a look at your laptop, printer or router, you are bound to find an RJ-45 connector. Principales aplicaciones x vertical