What is a Cat5e Ethernet Cable?
A newer Cat5 cable specification came out in 2001 called Cat5e (the “e” standing for “enhanced”), offering support Gigabit Ethernet speeds of up to 1000 Mbps, a bandwidth of 350 MHz and backwards compatibility with standard Cat5 cables. Standard Cat5 cables can support Gigabit speeds but at shorter distances (up to 5GBASE-T).
Cat5e cables are 10 times faster than standard Cat5 and complies with ANSI/TIA-568 standards. For home or small business network cabling, you most likely won’t notice much of a speed difference, but for IT companies or companies dealing with large amount of information (think terabytes), it makes a significant difference.
The Cat5e cable looks identical to the Cat5 physically but contain four pairs of copper wires instead of two, and the text on the cable sheath will indicate it’s a 5e rather than a 5. These cables undergo more rigorous testing than the standard Cat5 to eliminate crosstalk, or signal interference, and are twisted much more tightly.
