Electro/Telecom Industry Trends
Beyond Category 5 TIA/EIA 568A-5 Now Available!
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As networking demands escalate, new and forthcoming network applications have higher and higher data transmission rates. When Category 5 cables were first developed and introduced to the market, applications did not utilize all of the available bandwidth of the cable. Efficiency was also not a primary concern since the bit rates of the prevalent network applications were only a fraction of the available bandwidth of the cable. In fact, only two of the four pairs were used. The other two pairs in the four-pair cable were kept unused as spares. Of the two pairs that were used, one pair was used to transmit signals and the other pair was used to receive signals. This mode of operation is commonly known as half-duplex operation. Since two pairs are needed to both send and receive a signal, the effective bandwidths of the two pairs are each halved.
With the development of gigabit Ethernet over twisted pair, it became increasingly necessary to enable gigabit transmission over Category 5 cables. The target was to use the embedded base of Category 5 cabling, however it was determined that not all worse case implementations of Category 5 would be able to support gigabit transmissions. Enhanced Category 5 has improved electrical performance attributes designed to ensure that the cable will support applications that require additional bandwidth. With the recent release of TIA/EIA-568A-5 - Transmission Performance Specifications for 4-Pair 100-OHM Category 5e Cabling, which now includes Enhanced Category 5, all worse-case implementations of Category 5 will be able to guarantee support of gigabit Ethernet. Call 800-854-7179 (+303-397-7956) for pricing and additional information.