Your Questions, Answered.

Category 5 cable (Cat 5 or Cat5) is a twisted pair cable for carrying signals. This type of cable is used in structured cabling for computer networks such as Ethernet. The cable standard provides performance of up to 100 MHz and is suitable for 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX (Fast Ethernet), and 1000BASE-T (Gigabit Ethernet). Cat 5 is also used to carry other signals such as telephony and video.

Category 5 has been superseded by the Category 5e (enhanced) specification. The Category 5e specification improves upon the Category 5 specification by tightening some crosstalk specifications and introducing new crosstalk specifications that were not present in the original category 5 specification. The bandwidth of category 5 and 5e is the same: 100 MHz.

Category 6 cable, commonly referred to as Cat 6 (Cat6), is a standardized cable for Gigabit Ethernet and other network physical layers. It is backward compatible with the Category 5/5e cable standards.

Firewire or FireWire® Cable is also known as IEEE 1394. The original release of IEEE 1394-1995 is now known as Firewire 400. It can transfer data between devices at 100, 200, or 400 Mbit/s. The cable’s maximum length is limited to 14.8 ft. (4.5 meters), but you can have up to 16 cables daisy-chained by using active repeaters, external hubs, or internal hubs.