Category 6 UTP Standard is (finally) Here

An anonymous reader writes "This is only important for the networkphiles out there, but the Category 6 UTP specification is finally here. The standard is the TIA/EIA-568-B.2-1. The significance of this is that now you can transmit at 250Mhz frequencies (vs 100Mhz of Cat 5/5e). So 1Gbps is easily achievable. Of course ther's still Category 7 (600Mhz) in development, but I guess we should eventually move to fiber." Who hasn't crimped cat-5 before?

Comments

Compare the cost of copper and fiber...

[Bonker]

...When you're wiring about 500 workstations and servers over a reasonably sized office. You run into having to buy literally *miles* of cable when you wire even a medium-sized IT office. At that volume, buying Cat6 or Cat5 is non-trivially less expensive than fiber.

Fiber? Not in my network

[div_2n]

Unless you put your fiber cables in an unbendable channel, it isn't worth the hassle of having to replace a faulty cable because some bozo decided to fold the cable up and break the fiber. I have seen this happen many times.

For the forseable future, gigabit to the desktop is more than 95% of users will need unless computing environments move to server-side VR operating systems that are fully streamed to a user with full motion and sound.

Server back planes and clusters are two of the biggest bandwidth hogs that might possibly need something faster than gigabit ethernet.

Cat 5 crimpin'

[Wiseazz]

I worked for a medium-sized IT consulting firm. When we moved into a larger office space, they saved money by making everyone in the office make patch cables. Office Admin., everybody. Glad I was billable :)

This cable's going to be pricey.

[acceleriter]

So we plan to save money on Cat-6 by using two Cat-3 cables in parallel.

Re:100Mbit vs. 1000Mbit?

[Clue4All]

Yes, it will increase the distance that gigabit copper can be run, as well as increase the signal-to-noise ratio. With gigabit switches starting to hit the market at decent prices now, I'd be very surprised if we saw slower hardware than that making use of Cat6.