Category Cables and Their Non-Category Applications

  

 

CATEGORY CABLES AND THEIR NON-CATEGORY APPLICATIONS // Ralph Parrett - Liberty

 

 

100-Ohm twisted pair cabling has come a long way since the first launch of the 568 standard.  Categories 1, 2, 4, and 5 are obsolete.  Category 3 hangs on by a ripcord and Category 5e has already lost its market lead to Category 6.  Category 6A is moving out of data centers and demand is increasing for even higher performing cables.

There are a lot of acronyms related to cable construction, you've heard of UTP and STP before?  Well those are not accurate enough to identify a cable anymore.  Now you have these acronyms:

  • U/UTP:  Unshielded twisted pair cable, no shield anywhere.  
  • F/UTP:  Screened unshielded twisted pair cable, one overall foil shield with a drain wire.   
  • SF/UTP:  Same as F/UTP but an overall braid shield over the foil shield and may or may not have a drain wire.  
  • U/FTP:  Shielded twisted pair cable, each pair individually shielded with a common drain wire.  
  • F/FTP:  Screened shielded twisted pair cable, one overall shield and each pair individually shielded with a common drain wire.  
  • SF/FTP:  Same as F/FTP but an overall braid shield over the other shields and may or may not have a drain wire.

 

There are more, but these are the most common constructions.

Today the twisted pair infrastructure is used for many applications that are definitely not under the original LAN standard.  Sending high frequency media over twisted pair used to be an expensive alternative to cables made for that specific purpose, remember RGB cable?  Now the cost of electronics has plunged and twisted pair cable very inexpensive and better performing than ever before, the installation using media transceivers over twisted pair is the standard versus the exception.  Why?  Because that twisted pair infrastructure will support many new technologies well into the future whereas the old analog RGB has to be removed and replaced to be upgraded.  You only have to install one cable to solve all your transmission issues.  All content will be reduced to network data in the ne