There has been a great deal of speculation over the cat 5 vs cat 6 topic. The differences between cat 5 and cat 6 are vast and numerous. The most general difference comes with the processing speed. While cat 5 can process
MHz at a rate of 100 MHz , the cat 6 can process over 200 MHz. The cat 6 also features much better insertion losses, NEXT (Near End Crosstalk), and a much better return loss. When are you comparing cat 5
vs cat 6 you should take all this improvements into consideration. The cat 6 will result in a much higher reliability and data rates that are virtually unachievable for the cat 5.
The difference between cat5 vs cat 6 for frequency range is a whooping 250
MHz while the cat 5 and the cat 5e are limited to only 100mhz. This allows someone using a cat 6 cable to transfer data more than 100 percent faster than the others. This is mostly important for transferring large amounts of data over a short period of time. The cat 6 cable runs a NEXT of almost 40DB while the cat 5 and cat e run at 27 and 30 Db respectively.
The ARC difference between the cat 5 vs cat6 are very impressive running almost three times faster than the cat 5e at 18.2DB. The cat 6 has almost made slight improvements on return loss, functioning at almost a 20 percent better rate then the Cat 5 and Cat 5e cables. The cat 6 cable has remained the same in the area of delay skew running the same 50
nanoseconds as the cat 5 and the cat 5e.
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