When last we talked, the engineers were playing with twisted pair cable, and the result was Category 3. This marked the first time there was a standard for a twisted pair cable that all the manufacturers needed to follow in order to market their cable as “Category 3” cable. It was possible to get a 10Mbs data signal across twisted pair. The only reason we needed coax now was for the IDF feeds. Those of us in the industry knew that this was only the beginning. We knew change was happening. We just didn’t know how fast and how often. Not only was coax going away, but fiber was here. The utilities were using fiber to bring circuits into large facilities and transmission speeds were getting faster. The network hub was also starting to be replaced with a network switch. What this meant was instead of the hub sending out a shared 10 Mbs signal, the switch was sending out a dedicated 10 Mbs single to each port, or device.
Category 4 cable poked its head up for a brief time, and was quickly replaced by Category 5 cable. This cable could support a 100Mbs half duplex signal, meaning it would either transmit or receive data at 100MBS, but not do both at the same time. But that wasn’t a factor. Can you imagine…100 Mbs. With these data speeds available, how are the switches to be linked together? In the closet, they can cascade off each other. With internal fiber still slightly out of reach for most, Category 5 cable was also used as closet links. Watch your flips!! And now with the advent if the internet, the sky was the limit.
Category 5 cable was the workhorse and held down the fort for quite a while, until Category 5e came out. Cat 5e, as we call it, was the first foray into the gigabit Ethernet world with copper. Data centers had been doing it for years with fiber, now it was at the desktop on copper. Not only was the cost of 5e only slightly higher than Cat 5, the cost of fiber components began to drop and now made it cost effective for just about everyone to use fiber as a backbone. It was at this point that technology seemed to be advancing exponentially.
Voice over IP, Power Over Ethernet, Video Conferencing, imaging…all of these applications need bigger and better cabling. Category 6 cable was engineered for full gigabit applications, but then we needed Category 6A, for 10 gigabit applications. POE switches are putting out more and more power, requiring upgraded wiring. Data centers are pushing 40 gigabit speeds over copper cable assemblies for short distances. Standards are written for Category 7, and Category 8 is in development.
How far will we go? What part of the wave are we riding? I don’t have the answers to those questions, but I do know that as emerging technologies are being introduced, KTS is here to make sure that if is something that will be a benefit for you, we will let you know about it.
Until next time…
