Cat 5 Cables

Cat 5, also known as ethernet or category 5 cables, are twisted pair cables that are used as an industry standard for network and telephony wiring. Recently superseded by category 5e cables, they are unshielded wires containing (commonly) four pairs of gauge twisted copper wires that are terminated in RJ-four5 or 8P8C connectors. The internal wiring in cat 5 cables are twisted to help promote noise rejection and, when a new connection is added, it is recommended that only 12.7 millimeters of cabling is untwisted to make the connection.

Category 5 cables that are used in computer networking and telephony systems generally contain four pairs of wires that are color coded to industry standard specifications. The internal wires are marked up as one wire being a solid color and its pair will be a white cable with a colored stripe denoting the pair. The term category 5 actually describes the wiring scheme of the cable, so cat 5 cables do not have a set number of internal wires and actually, in some applications, can contain over one hundred pairs of cables.

Category 5 cables are preceded by category 3 cables, which could only manage data transfer rates of ten megabits per second; category 5 can potentially handle one hundred megabits per second with certain limitations. One such limitation is the length of the cable, as once over one hundred meters in length the signals being sent reduce in strength. So, in practice, the maximum length of a cat 5 cable should be no more than ninety meters with five meters at each end to account for patch cables that connect the equipment to the wall socket.

Category 5 cable connectors are frequently incorrectly referred to as RJfour5 connectors, whereas actually they are more commonly 8P8C modular connectors. The reason for this is because of the similarities between the wiring in RJfour5 connectors and 8P8C connectors. If you are in any doubt as to what cabling you have, the specific category of cable will be printed on the outside of the cable.

Depending on their uses, there are 3 types of pinout configurations in cat-5 cables; a straight cable, a crossover cable and a roll-over cable. Straight cables are for connecting a computer to a switch, crossover cables are for connecting two personal computers and a roll-over cable is for connecting a PC to a router.

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