Nowadays, more and more electronic devices require a connection to the internet. Therefore it is very important to have everything connected properly at home. There are a few things that you should consider when connecting a network.
The days of the computer being the only device connected to a network is far behind us. Nowadays there is more and more equipment that needs to be connected to the internet or home network. For example a smart TV, printers, media players, NAS or Raspberry pi. These devices can usually be connected with a WiFi connection, but a wired connection is often more stable and faster.
To cable a network at home, UTP cables are used. These are available in different categories. The categories start at Cat5e and run up to Cat7. The higher the category, the faster the network cable. In the overview down below you can see the differences:
- Cat5e – Has a speed up to 1.000 Mbit/s, 100MHz
- Cat6 – Has a speed up to 1.000 Mbit/s, 250MHz
- Cat6a – Has a speed up to 10.000 Mbit/s, 500MHz
- Cat7 – Has a speed up to 10.000 Mbit/s, 1.000MHz
The big difference between Cat6 and Cat7 is the speed and frequency. As you may have already seen, a Cat7 cable has a max. speed of 10.000 Mbit/s and a Cat6 cable has a max. of 1.000 Mbit/s. Also, the Cat7 has a higher frequency than the Cat6. The frequency indicates how often the signal can pass through the cable. At a frequency of 1,000 MHz, 10,000 Mbit / s can therefore be transferred 10,000 times per second 10,000 Mbit / s. A Cat7 cable will therefore be able to transfer data faster than a Cat6 cable.
