Cat8 - Network cable number one?
Cat8 has landed on the market and its features are turning heads among the specialists.
What is Cat8?
Category 8 is the brand new version of CAT-network cables and it does make a big leap forward from previous versions. Its shielding has been improved from since and it is significantly faster too. Physically the cable is similar compared to previous cables and it is still using well known RJ45-jack that will please many users because of its universality and availability.
| Category | Frequency | Max data transfer speed | Shielding |
| Cat5e | 100MHz (max 350MHz) | 1000Mbps | UTP or STP |
| Cat6 | 250MHz (max 550MHz) | 1000Mbps | UTP or STP |
| Cat6A | 500MHz (max 550MHz) | 10Gbps | UTP or STP |
| Cat7 | 600MHz | 10Gbps | Always |
| Cat8 | 2000MHz | 25Gbps - 40Gbps | Always |
What makes Cat8-cable so valuable?
Manufacturing Cat8 cables is significantly more costly compared with the previous categories and this reflects straight into the price. The faster the cable is, the tighter the pairing needs to be and more shielding is required to reach that demand. All those requirements reflect on manufacturing costs.
Cat8 can even rival fiber optic cables while it can transfer data very fast at 25 Gbps or 40 Gbps at 2 GHz frequency within 30 meters of length. This is making it significantly faster than previous categories were and thus boasting itself much further in evolution.
Application
Probability is that Cat8 will first accommodate data centers, businesses and other applications that require fast transfer speed, reliability and where all devices can utilize all that cable's capability. It is backwards compatible down to Cat6a and thanks to RJ45-jack it is universal with able to work with millions of existing devices.
Would I need this cable?
If your aim is to use it at home, you probably might not get everything out of it, unless that cable goes through many electromagnetic fields where better shielding is necessary. If the devices in between the cable transfer data with speed of 1 Gbps are then previous categories much better choice, as Cat6. Data centers and such will get the best advantage out of the new cable where speed and reliability is required.
Features:
- Category: Cat8
- Transfer speed: 2000 MHz - 25-40 Gbps (30 m which after 10 Gbps up to 100 m)
- Socket: RJ45
- Shielding: Always. About 15dB improvement on AXT
- Gold plated connectors
Note, that Cat8.1 will work with previous categories which utilize RJ45 connector, but Cat8.2 is not compatible with them.
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