Category 3 Cable

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Category 3 cable, commonly known as Cat 3, is an unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cable
designed to reliably carry data up to 10 Mbit/s, with a possible bandwidth of 16 MHz. It is
part of a family of copper cabling standards defined jointly by the Electronic Industries
Alliance and the Telecommunications Industry Association. Category 3 was a popular
cabling format among computer network administrators in the early 1990s, but fell out of
popularity in favor of the very similar, but higher performing, Cat 5 standard. Presently,
most new structured cable installations are built with Cat 5e or Cat 6 cable. Cat 3 is
currently still in use in two-line telephone systems, although Cat 5 or higher could do the
same work while facilitating a transition to VOIP.

Note that unlike Cat 1,2,4, and 5 cables, Cat 3 is still recognized by TIA/EIA-568-B,
its defining standard.

The newer 100BASE-T4 standard, which achieves speeds of 100 Mbit/s by using all 4
pairs of wires, allowed older Cat 3 based infrastructures to achieve a much higher
bandwidth.

Cat 1: Currently unrecognized by TIA/EIA. Previously used for POTS telephone
communications, ISDN and doorbell wiring.
Cat 2: Currently unrecognized by TIA/EIA. Previously was frequently used on 4
Mbit/s token ring networks.
Cat 4: Currently unrecognized by TIA/EIA. Provided performance of up to 20 MHz,
and was frequently used on 16 Mbit/s token ring networks.
Cat 5: Currently unrecognized by TIA/EIA. Provided performance of up to 100 MHz,
and was frequently used on 100 Mbit/s ethernet networks. May be unsuitable for
1000BASE-T gigabit ethernet.
Cat 5e: Currently defined in TIA/EIA-568-B. Provides performance of up to 100
MHz, and is frequently used for both 100 Mbit/s and gigabit ethernet networks.
Cat 6: Currently defined in TIA/EIA-568-B. It provides performance of up to 250
MHz, more than double category 5 and 5e.
Cat 6a: Future specification for 10 Gbit/s applications.
Cat 7: An informal name applied to ISO/IEC 11801 Class F cabling. This standard
specifies four individually-shielded pairs (STP) inside an overall shield. Designed
for transmission at frequencies up to 600 MHz.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Category 3 Cable"

Cat 3 Cable

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