Category 6 Cable
American Standards Institute standard for UTP (Unshielded twisted pair) cables.
Category 6 cable, commonly referred to as Cat-6, is a cable standard for Gigabit Ethernet and other network protocols that is backward compatible with the Category 5/5e and Category 3 cable standards. Compared with Cat-5 and Cat-5e, Cat-6 features more stringent specifications for crosstalk and system noise. The cable standard provides performance of up to 250 MHz and is suitable for 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX (Fast Ethernet), 1000BASE-T / 1000BASE-TX (Gigabit Ethernet) and 10GBASE-T (10-Gigabit Ethernet). Category 6 cable has a reduced maximum length when used for 10GBASE-T; Category 6a cable, or Augmented Category 6, is characterized to 500MHz and has improved alien crosstalk characteristics, allowing 10GBASE-T to be run for the same distance as previous protocols. Category 6 cable can be identified by the printing on the side of the cable sheath.
