Showing posts with label network. Show all posts
Showing posts with label network. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Basic Differences Between CAT5, CAT5E, CAT6, CAT6e, CAT6a Cables







  RJ45 Pin-out for Network Connection 


Troubleshooting cabling problems in most cases has to be done onsite. A cable technician would have to be at the location to use tools for diagnosing cables such a toner. Desktop and networking hardware that are interconnected by network cables can be remotely access online. Applications such as online desktop support software provides the access into a network over the web from which connection could be tested,  network switching can be configured or diagnosed. 
 

Basic Difference Between CAT5,CAT6,CAT6e and CAT6a Cables
 
Category 5
Category 5 cabling transmits at a frequency of 100MHz. This provides a rated line speed of up to 100Mbit/s and a cable segment length of 100 meters maximum. Most Category 5 cables, were designed for earlier networks replacing cat 3, only used two twisted pairs of wires. However, older Category 5 cabling continues to make up the majority of the world’s network cabling infrastructure.

Category 5e
Category 5e was later introduced as an improved specification to the very popular Category 5 that replaced Cat 3.  The improvement was in noise reduction. By reducing the noise and signal interference beyond Cat 5, Category 5e rated transfer speeds increased to 350 Mbit/s over 100 meters. The new 5e cabling standard however also required all the cabling to include four twisted pairs not just two like with Cat 5. All eight contacts has to be used. Cat 5e introduced and optimized encoding scheme that allows up to 50-meter lengths of Category 5e cable to provide at or near Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T) speeds. This was during the era of the early stages of Gigabit

Category 6
Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T) became mainstream and required new industry-standard cables capable of transmitting at a higher frequencies than Cat 5e to go beyond the 50 meter limitation. Cat 6e transmits at 250 MHz. The new Category 6 cable uses thicker-gauge wire to attain the higher frequencies, it has increased shielding, and more pair twists per inch to reduce signal noise and interference. The new tighter specifications introduced with Cat 6 cabling guarantee that 100-meter runs of Category 6 are capable of 1000 Mbit/s transfer speeds. As with 5e reducing the cable length can achieve higher speeds than the category types design goal so 10-Gigabit Ethernet speeds can be achieved  when reducing cable lengths to less than 50 meters.

Category 6e
The limitation of 50 meters of 10Gigabit was over come with Category 6 Enhanced (6e).  Cat 6e is an augmented specification designed to double transmission frequency of Cat 6 to 500 MHz. It has the more pair twists per inch as does Cat 6 but it's also wrapping Category 6 in grounded foil shielding, a full 10-Gigabit Ethernet speeds can be achieved without sacrificing the max cable length of 100 meters.

Category 6a
Category 6a (or Augmented Category 6) is defined at frequencies up to 500 MHz—twice that of Cat. 6 but he same as 6e. Because it is shielded, Cat 6a performs at improved specifications over 6 and 6e, in particular in the area of alien cross-talk when compared to Cat 6 UTP   Cat 6 UTP exhibited high alien noise in high frequencies.6A. To reduce the noise, 6a EA specification (not EIA/TIA) require a new generation of connecting hardware that offers far superior performance. 6A connectors performs 3 dB better than a Cat 6a connector that conforms with the EIA/TIA specification. 3 dB equates to 100% increase of near-end cross-talk noise reduction. 


More wire specifications and a practical case example use of 10GB is available at this additional location - Differences Between Category 5 and Category 6 . The use of special case cables such as cross-over cables is also covered at the same article location.








Thursday, June 28, 2007

Netgear Rangemax Router Series















I recently installed one of Netgear's Rangemax routers in a home office. I was very impressed with the wireless distance and more importantly the signal strength the new RangeMax routers from Netgear achieved.


The home was not an average home office. Some of the node locations were behind several walls and even a cement wall. Now we all know that traditional sheet rocked walls degrade signal quality the least so seeing the signal pass strongly through those walls was no great achievement but even in this case, the was literally no loss at all. Through the concrete and plaster I had excellent signal strength on one of the desktops that was behind the combination.

The configuration was very much the same at other products of it's category but only found a dislike in the fact that when I made a change to the configuration, Internet access was hampered somewhat. This may have been a coincidental occurrence but it was noticeable. The change that was being done at the time was a DNS server address change for client of the DHCP server. Another thing that I found curious, but one I've seen on many other home networking products, was a change not "sticking" . What I mean by this is that when the change was applied to the router, again it was in the DHCP section and had to do with the ip address range for the scope, it didn't actually take. The page showed the change but when a computer on the network tried to get a new ip address it continued to get the old ip address.

This was a little disturbing and after wasting a little time trying and retrying to get a new address on the computer, I realized the problem was on the the router itself. I reapplied the settings even though as mentioned the page showed the address changes I made, and restarted. The changes applied and stayed as I wanted them this time and the computer received a new updated ip address from the router.

Aside from those really trivial events, the Rangemax 824v3 router worked very well and had some very nice throughput. It was noticeably better that the other (manufacturer will remain unnamed) router that it replaced. Wireless security was improved over older models too. It had my favorite combination of wireless security features of WPA, TKIP, AES - and they worked very well. The Netgear Rangemax wireless router also support URL content filtering and web site logging.

  • For computer remote support software see http://www.4remotesupport.com/ , Provide PC remote support affordably with web based pc remote support software by 4RemoteSupport.