Twisted pair cable bandwidth and frequency range
Twisted pair cables can do data transfer at specific cycles per second, also called as frequency.
Example: 1 GHz (giga Hertz) or 2 GHz (giga Hertz).
SI Units (The System International units) is the universally accepted system of measurement. SI units has its unit of frequency as Hertz, represented by symbol Hz. Hertz is cycles per one second. If the frequency is 500 MHz, then it is 500,000,000 Hertz or cycles per second).
MHz and Mbps are not equal, MHz is normally used to denote analogue signals rate while Mbps for digital bandwidth speed.
Bandwidth of twisted pair cables (Mbps) is dependent on which encoding the Ethernet standard is using. Manchester encoding was used for 10 Mbps Ethernet.
Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps) uses an encoding called as PAM-5 encoding.
Following table lists different Category twisted pair cables and their bandwidth and frequencies.
UTP Category |
Frequency |
Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|
Category 5e |
100 MHz |
1 Gbps |
Category 6 |
250 MHz |
Upto 10 Gbps |
Category 6a |
500 MHz |
Upto 10 Gbps |
Category 7 |
600 MHz |
Upto 10 Gbps |
Category 7a |
1 GHz (1000 MHz) |
40 to 100 Gbps |
Category 8 |
2 GHz (2000 MHz) |
25 to 40 Gbps |