sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Cable Spec Change

I tend to read or browse a lot technical references. One item I came across, I thought, was the end of the 5e spec in 2012. Anyone have definitive information on this subject? Will the manufacturers cease 5e production and suppliers deplete stock and force users to migrate towards the 6 standard?

Haven't heard that one. Not sure what they mean by "end of the 5e spec". Obviously the specifications, or requirements for what makes it Cat 5e will not be changed. Do they mean people will no longer specify it for jobs?

I've seen nothing from BICSI that would indicate this.

The vast majority of the wiring we do is Cat 5e.

maybe they are moving from little E to Big E specs??? Or maybe manufactorers are just streamlining and going to make only one Cat5 spec, and that would be the 350mghz CAT5E?

There was a time when Cat 3 was supposed to go away, but it never did.

google is not my friend on this. Searching for anything "5e" turns up zillions of hits, almost all of them noise.

What bugs me about this is that CAT 6 cable is the answer to a question that nobody asked. Gigabit ethernet was designed to run on cat 5e cable.

The only thing that requires a higher spec cable is 10 gig ethernet, and it requires 6A to go the full distance. People who really need a 10 gagabit-per-second link usually run it over fiber anyway.

The other concern that I have is that if the official 5e spec is discontinued, then anyone can call anything a CAT 5e cable. Old buzzards like me remember when RG8 was an actual mil spec for coax. After the official RG8 spec was discontinued, that opened the door for miles of sub-standard cable being sold with the RG8 label on it.

Jim
**************************************************
Your call may be monitored for quality purposes.

When was the RG 8 standard discontinued? I ran miles of RG8 for Microwave installations about 1997-2001.

Sam

Sam, I am not sure exactly when the Military stopped using the RG specs. The wikipedia entry for coaxial cable mentions some dates, but it is somewhat vague on exactly when the new standard [MIL-C-17] was adopted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable#Standards

Manufacturers continue to use the RG standards to this day as a ready means of identifying cable types. The cable you purchased in the late 1990's most likely came from one of the big telecom vendors and therefore met a number of standards, but none of them was as readily useful as "RG-8" in identifying the cable type.

Most of the junk cable was sold at consumer electronics outlets and never carried any recognizable brand names. Although, there was also a well known consumer electronics chain that may have sold some flaky cable and called it "RG-8".

Jim
**************************************************
Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.