Picking the right network cable can feel confusing. There are different types, like Cat 5, Cat 6, and Cat 7, and they all seem similar at first. If you have ever looked at the wires behind your router ...

Category 5 cables (or more commonly referred to as Cat 5 cables) are a specific standard of ethernet cable. There are also Cat 5e, Cat 6, Cat 7, and Cat 8 cables to choose from. The main differences ...

Every so often, we get questions from people who plan to install Ethernet cable in their homes. The most frequent question we get is, "what's the difference between Cat 5e and Cat 6 cable, and which ...

Though we’ve never used their cables, [Blue Jeans Cable] out of Seattle, WA sure does seem to take the black art of cable manufacture seriously. When they read the Cat 6 specification, they knew they ...

Joel Keller spent more than a decade in IT before becoming a full-time journalist. He has written for The New York Times, Parade and others. A robust network is a critical component of business ...

Ethernet cables are a simple way to improve the speed of data transfers. That’s largely why, as businesses continue to improve their networking solutions to support high-speed transfers, the global ...

There is a special type of Category 5, or Cat 5, cable that can be used to connect two computers without the use of a router or switch. These cables are known as crossover cables and they have ...

Category 5 (CAT 5) cable is a multipair (usually four-pair) cable that consists of twisted-pair conductors, used mainly for data transmission. Basic CAT 5 cable was designed for characteristics of up ...

As colleges and universities roll out Wi-Fi 6 on their campuses, they must decide whether to upgrade their cabling from CAT 5 to CAT 6 or 6A. Joel Keller spent more than a decade in IT before becoming ...

This article was updated March 31, 2023. It was originally published Jan. 8, 2016. Engineers and designers who don’t regularly work with CAT data of cables, and even some that do, can get confused ...