Category 6 UTP Standard is (finally) Here

[Phantasm66]

Category 6 UTP Standard is (finally) Here
Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday July 06, @10:34AM
from the just-after-I-wired-my-basement dept.


An anonymous reader writes "This is only important for the networkphiles out there, but the Category 6 UTP specification is finally here. The standard is the TIA/EIA-568-B.2-1. The significance of this is that now you can transmit at 250Mhz frequencies (vs 100Mhz of Cat 5/5e). So 1Gbps is easily achievable. Of course ther's still Category 7 (600Mhz) in development, but I guess we should eventually move to fiber." Who hasn't crimped cat-5 before?

source: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/06/137222&mode=thread&tid=137

TIA Approves Category 6 Telecommunications Standard for Publication

Arlington, Va. -- The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) announced today that the category 6 standard for telecommunications cabling has been approved for publication as TIA/EIA-568-B.2-1 (buy it now). This addendum is part of the TIA/EIA-568-B series of commercial building cabling standards, which are the most successful standards published by TIA. The new category 6 standard specifies requirements for 100-ohm balanced twisted-pair cables, connecting hardware, patch cords, channels and permanent links, and provides test procedures for laboratory and field performance verification over the frequency range of 1 to 250 MHz. Because category 6 supports positive power sum attenuation to crosstalk (PSACR) margins up to 200 MHz, this new cabling system offers double the bandwidth of category 5e cabling and vastly improved signal-to-noise margins. The category 6 standard also includes cable and connecting hardware balance recommendations for improved electromagnetic compatibility performance.


Category 6 cabling recognizes advances in cabling technology and is designed to be backward compatible with categories 3, 5 and 5e. This ensures that any applications that operate on lower category cabling will be fully supported by category 6 cabling. When different category components are mixed with category 6 components, the resultant cabling will satisfy the category transmission requirements of the lower performing component. To ensure generic cabling system performance, category 6 component requirements are specified to be interoperable when products from different manufacturers are mated.


According to TIA TR-42 Committee Chair Bob Jensen, the publication of the category 6 standard represents a milestone in the history of commercial building cabling specification. "Category 6 facilitates data throughput previously unachievable over balanced twisted-pair cabling. TIA and the ATM Forum have already published gigabit applications standards to operate over category 6 cabling. We anticipate applications groups to begin development of protocols supporting even higher throughput over category 6 cabling."

source: http://www.tiaonline.org/media/press_releases/index.cfm?parelease=02-88

 

[PHATMAN5050]

Now, we just need other network hardware to support such speeds. Personally, i think wireless is the future, rather than fiber optics. I'm sure that they will eventually encorporate each other though. Good find phantazmm. :grinthumb

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I've used CAT6 cable in my home network for about six months now. I guess it's unofficial then?

 

[PHATMAN5050]

what? what hub or router runs on cat6 cable?

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Normal, cheap, 100MBit 5-port hub. It's just the cables that are CAT6. I had some problems with CAT5 cabling, they didn't handle 100MBit at full speed but CAT6 ones do. Probably too much RFI in my room.