Categories

The most simple and effective way is to look at the printings of the cable jacket.

Generally, the manufacturers they will print the Category of the cable on the cable jacket:

• CAT 5 - Category 5

• CAT 5E - Category 5E

• CAT 6 - Category 6

• CAT 6A - Category 6A

• CAT 7 - Category 7

• CAT 8 - Category 8

  
  

Printings on cable jacket

Look at the printing on the cable jacket can determine the specific category. Secondly, in addition to the cable type, there are other letters printed on the cable jacket as well. What do they mean?

Take Linkwylan cables for example:

• LINKWYLAN: Brand name

• CAT6A: Category 6A

• S-FTP: Overall shielded by braiding, Each pair screened by foil

• 26AWG*4P: 4 Pairs of twisted wires. AWG represents the wire gauge, the value in front of AWG (such as 24AWG, 26AWG) represents the cross section value of the conductor wires.

• TIA/EIA 568B: American standards

• EN 50288, EN 50173: European standards

• ISO/IEC 11801: International standards

Whether the network cable matches the broadband?

After knew the type of cable, how to see whether it matches the broadband?

At present, the common 100/1000MBit network cable on the market is Cat 5 and Cat 5e, Gigabit network cable is Cat 6, 10 Gigabit network cable is Cat 6A and Cat 7, 25-40G cable is Cat 8.

Additionally, the network cable can be backward compatible, but not upward compatible.