atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring CAT6 250 Hhz vs 550 MHZ bandwidth difference?

Hi everyone.

I see that some CAT 6 is rated up to 250 mhz and other cable is rated to 550 mhz.

Can anyone tell me the difference?

Could the 550 Mhz have the ability to go a lot faster someday when new Networking cards and routers come out?

Do you think its worth extra money to go with the 550 mhz vs the 250 mhz CAT 6 cable?

Please let me know

Thanks.

The 550MHz number you saw is just marketing hype. It simply means that they tested it to 550MHz (like a sweep test). Did they say how much positve ACR they had at 550MHz?

You can test it at 1GHz if you want to, but if you don't have positive ACR and headroom then it doesn't mean anything.

Some CAT-5E cables are marketed as 400MHz (Mohawk AdvanceNET). But, that doesn't mean that it has higher bandwidth than CAT-6 which is a 250MHz cable.

The numbers to remember, and the only ones that are important, are:

-- CAT-5/5E = 100MHz
-- CAT-6 = 250MHz
-- CAT-6A = 500MHz

To answer your question... If this is for a commercial app then use either CAT-5E or CAT-6A. If it is resi then CAT-6 may be useful over CAT-5E for supporting 10Gbe in the future up to 55m. Otherwise, you are probably wasting $$