Specifications and Testing of Cat5e Data Cabling

The "EIA/TIA-568-B" standard is an improved form of "EIA/TIA-568-A" which defines numbers of parameters to describe performance specifications for Cat5e.

Newer standards specify parameters for higher data rates like Cat6 but cables and equipment manufactured and installed according to these specifications are more costly as compare to Cat5e standard.

Specifications and Metrics Used for Cat5e Data Cabling:

Cabling of Cat5e is very much similar to Category 5. The only major difference for end-user between these two categories is speed of data transmission. Cat5e can transmit data at up to one Gigabit speed, generally known as Gigabit Ethernet, whereas Category 5 transmit data at up to only 100 Megabit.

To the cabling installer, the main difference between Cat5 and Cat5e data cabling is that the acceptable maximums for metrics, such as near-and far-end crosstalk, delay and delay skew, along with the other crosstalk measurements such as power sum near end and power sum far end, are much lower with Cat 5e cabling then Cat5.

Testing in Commercial & Residential Environments:

The owner of a commercial network who wants successful and proficient data transfers across the complete network should take more concern about what type of testing is performed on their new cable plant than a homeowner will need to be.

A homeowner is generally going to be makes sure that the connections are made appropriately or that the wiremap for the cable is accurate. Whereas a commercial owner needs to make sure that his/her cable plant can transfer a certain amount of data throughput without loss or corruption of data.

To make sure data accuracy, a commercial owner may want to have their data cabling certified. Certification means that each individual cable is tested for compliance with the enhanced EIA/TIA-568-B standard, for all metrics, including all variations of crosstalk, attenuation, and delay and delay skew. After installation of cables, a printout which contains all the details for each cable including the physical cable number and where it goes is printed and given to the owner of the cable plant to certify the plant.

Those That Require Fast Speed:

The Cat5e data cabling standard is becoming old-fashioned rather rapidly. The latest standard, Category 6 Augmented, delivers data transfer speeds at up to ten gigabit.  But this 10x speed jump is expensive & the cable and equipment made to this standard are more expensive than previous categories.  Even small numbers of terminations of Cat 5e cabling can be done in-house, whereas with Cat 6/6, terminations should be done by particularly qualified installers in order to make sure quality terminations that meet the standard.